Atlantic Sentinel

Category: News

  • Germany’s Social Democrats Elect Left-Wing Leaders

    Earlier this month, I argued that lurching to the left would be a risky strategy for Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), but that the alternative — continuing to rule in a grand coalition with the center-right — is too.

    A change could scare off centrist voters, who have an alternative in Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats or Germany’s pragmatic Green party. But the grand coalition has wearied leftists, who have an alternative in the Greens and the far-left Die Linke.

    Not making a choice has been worst of all. The SPD has fallen below 15 percent support in recent surveys, behind the Christian Democrats and Greens and neck and neck with the far-right Alternative for Germany. (more…)

  • Top European Lawyer Argues in Favor of Catalan Politicians

    Maciej Szpunar, an advocate general at the European Court of Justice, has argued in favor of Catalan politicians who were elected to the European Parliament in May but have been prevented by the Spanish government from taking their seats.

    Former regional president Carles Puigdemont and former regional health minister Toni Comín, both of the center-right Together for Catalonia party, have been living in self-imposed exile in Belgium since 2017 to avoid arrest for leading a failed independence bid that year.

    Oriol Junqueras, the former leader of the Republican Left, stayed in Spain and was sentenced to thirteen years in prison last month for misuse of public funds and sedition against the Spanish state. (more…)

  • Democratic Primary News

    • Beto O’Rourke has dropped out.
    • Joe Biden has pulled ahead of the other candidates in the endorsement primary.
    • Elizabeth Warren has released a plan to pay for Medicare-for-all.
    • Kamala Harris has pulled out of New Hampshire and is focusing entirely on Iowa.
    • Biden is at 27 percent support in recent polls, followed by Warren at 21, Bernie Sanders at 17, Pete Buttigieg at 8 and Harris at 5.
    • Biden is down from a high of 40 percent in May, when Warren was polling at just 8 percent. (more…)

  • Catalan Independence Leaders Sentenced to 9-13 Years in Prison

    Oriol Junqueras
    Oriol Junqueras, the leader of Catalonia’s Republican Left, makes a speech in Barcelona, Spain, July 20, 2015 (CDC)
    • Nine Catalan separatist leaders have been found guilty of sedition and in some cases misuse of public funds by Spain’s Supreme Court.
    • Among the convicted is former Catalan vice president, and leader of one of the two largest independence parties in the region, Oriol Junqueras, who has been sentenced to thirteen years in prison.
    • The Supreme Court threw out the most serious charge, rebellion, which carries a 25-year prison sentence.
    • Demonstrations have broken out across Catalonia. Protesters are blocking major streets in Barcelona. Some are attempting to occupy the airport.
    • A European arrest warrant has been reissued for former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, who denounced the verdict as an “outrage” from self-imposed exile in Belgium. (more…)

  • Little Movement in Spanish Election Polls

    Pedro Sánchez
    Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez speaks at a congress of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party in Huesca, October 1 (PSOE/Eva Ercolanese)

    There hasn’t been a lot of movement in the polls since Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez failed to form a government in September and early elections were called for November. (more…)

  • Spain Will Almost Certainly Have to Call Elections Again

    Pedro Sánchez Albert Rivera
    Spanish party leaders Pedro Sánchez and Albert Rivera speak in Madrid, February 4, 2016 (PSOE)

    A possible last-minute deal between Spain’s ruling Socialist Party and the liberal Citizens collapsed on Tuesday, forcing caretaker prime minister Pedro Sánchez to either attempt a stitch-up with the far left or call elections in November, which would Spain’s fourth in as many years.

    The Citizens, who had for months ruled out voting in Sánchez’ favor over his willingness to negotiate with the ruling parties in Catalonia, offered to abstain from an investiture vote if the Socialist ruled out taxes increases on the middle class and pardons for Catalan leaders who are on trial for organizing an unauthorized independence vote two years ago.

    Sánchez claims he agreed to the terms; the Citizens insist he did not.

    Polls suggest the Citizens could lost a quarter of their support in an early election. Their indecisiveness is causing them to lose voters to both the Socialists on the left and the People’s Party on the right.

    But the Socialists are unlikely to gain enough support for a majority, meaning in two months Spain could be back where it is now. (more…)

  • Democratic Race Stable as Ten Candidates Qualify for Debate

    Ten candidates have qualified for the third Democratic presidential debate, to be held in two weeks’ time, putting pressure on the low-polling candidates to drop out.

    New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who failed to qualify, ended her campaign on Wednesday, joining John Hickenlooper, Jay Inslee, Seth Moulton and Eric Swalwell.

    Michael Bennet, Bill de Blasio, Steve Bullock, John Delaney, Tulsi Gabbard, Tim Ryan, Tom Steyer and Marianne Williamson remain in the race, although they have little support.

    The ten candidates who qualified are: Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Julián Castro, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Andrew Yang.

    Of those, Biden is the clear frontrunner while Sanders and Warren share second place in the polls. (more…)

  • American Deficits to Top Trillion Dollars for All of Next Decade

    United States Capitol Washington
    United States Capitol in Washington DC, January 15, 2017 (DoD/William Lockwood)

    The Congressional Budget Office has run the numbers on America’s fiscal outlook and it’s not pretty. (more…)

  • Johnson Warns Brexit Delay Will Benefit Labour

    Boris Johnson has finally put his head above the parapet and launched his bid to become Britain’s next prime minister.

    At a well-orchestrated event on Wednesday, which saw the former foreign secretary joined by a number of Conservative Party heavyweights, Johnson warned that his party faces an existential crisis if it fails to deliver Brexit.

    “Delay means defeat, delay means Corbyn,” he warned.

    Britain is due to leave the EU on October 31. (more…)

  • Dutch Ruling Parties Negotiate Two Extra Senate Seats

    Mark Rutte
    Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte makes a speech in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, June 13, 2018 (European Parliament/Fred Marvaux)

    The ruling parties in the Netherlands have managed to win an extra two seats in the Senate, giving them more room for negotiation with opposition parties.

    The projection was that the four parties in Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s coalition win would thirty out of 75 seats in the upper chamber, which would have made them dependent on the Greens to pass legislation.

    Now that they have 32, they can also do deals with the Labor Party, which has six. (more…)

  • Dutch Voters Punish Euroskeptics, Give Labor Victory

    Netherlands flag
    Flag of the Netherlands (Pixabay/Ben Kerckx)

    Dutch voters punished Euroskeptic parties of the left and right on Thursday, according to unofficial election results and an exit poll.

    The far-right Freedom Party, led by Geert Wilders, and the far-left Socialists would struggle to retain their seats in the European Parliament. The former currently has four, the latter two.

    An exit poll conducted by Ipsos gives the two parties one seat each. But voting results from 732 of 9340 polling places suggest neither might qualify at all. The exit poll has a one-seat margin of error.

    The official result is not announced until Sunday night, when all the EU’s 28 member states will have voted. But Dutch law requires individual polling places to read out their results on election night. Volunteers for the populist blog GeenStijl tallied the results, which were then analyzed by Ipsos’ competitor, Peil.nl. (more…)

  • Brexit Delay Could Benefit Left in European Elections

    Frans Timmermans Nicola Zingaretti Pedro Sánchez
    Dutch, Italian and Spanish socialist party leaders Frans Timmermans, Nicola Zingaretti and Pedro Sánchez meet in Brussels, March 21 (PES)

    The delay of Brexit could benefit the European left in elections in May.

    A poll conducted by Hanbury Strategy for Open Europe found that the British Labour Party could win nearly 38 percent support and close to thirty seats in Strasbourg.

    That would make theirs the largest delegation in the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), surpassing the German Social Democrats, and close the gap with the center-right European People’s Party (EPP), which stands to gain nothing from Brexit. Theresa May’s Conservatives group with the mildly Euroskeptic European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) instead.

    Britain will need to hold European elections if it is still in the EU next month. (more…)

  • Democratic Primary News

    • Joe Biden — who still hasn’t officially declared his candidacy — is fending off accusations that he has been too affectionate toward women in the past.
    • Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana is having a moment in the sun. He is a progressive who can appeal to the center, but the last time a mayor was nominated for the presidency by a major party was in 1812.
    • Bernie Sanders is moving up in the polls (although, keep in mind, those are more about name recognition than support at this point) and raised the most money by far ($18 million) in the first three months of 2019. (more…)

  • Democratic Primary News

    • Former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke is running for president.
    • Ohio senator Sherrod Brown has decided against seeking the Democratic nomination.
    • Former vice president Joe Biden — who still hasn’t declared yet — is ahead in the polls, but that is more about name recognition than anything else at this point. Only geeks like us are paying attention. Most voters don’t start to think about the election until a few months before the Iowa caucuses.
    • Democrats have chosen Milwaukee, Wisconsin to host their 2020 convention. (more…)

  • Democratic Primary News

    • Former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper and incumbent Washington governor Jay Inslee are running. The former is relatively moderate, the latter more left-wing and focused on climate change.
    • Joe Biden has hired the head of the influential Latino Victory Fund in what Politico describes as “the latest sign he’s running.”
    • Kamala Harris is elbowing out rivals as she courts wealthy Democratic donors in California.
    • Cory Booker, Harris and Amy Klobuchar are ahead in the “endorsement primary” as measured by FiveThirtyEight.
    • Michael Bloomberg and Hillary Clinton have decided against seeking the nomination. The former warned Democrats not to allow the primary process to “drag the party to an extreme” that could help reelect Donald Trump. (more…)