It’s a sad but politically typical day in 2020 America.

The most competent and qualified person running for President in 2020 has withdrawn from the race. From the moment Senator ElizabethWarren announced her candidacy she has been held up to a vicious double standard which prevails in this country.

Labels never affixed to the guys were hung around the neck of Senator Warren from day one.

Smart, politically aggressive women are skewered with typical sexist labels. “Shrill,” “School marm,” “snake” just to name a few.  Never mind that Senator Warren is a tenured law professor with decades of experience in government and academe.

In the minds of too many Americans, men and regrettably women, Senator Warren was tarred with the label of someon who couldn’t meet the standards of leadership.

What do we have now?  Two old white guys vying to run against a misogynist, abusive circus clown with orange hair.

The Nation – Elie Mystal 3.5.2020

Warren was a brilliant candidate who would have made a great president. The problem? She’s a woman—and she isn’t “perfect.”

Democrats are not going to be the ones to get a woman elected president. This party, as currently constituted, is never going to fully get behind a woman candidate, because no real woman can match the pubescent fantasy of a woman Democrats seem to want. 

I don’t remember how old I was when I realized that Weird Science was a horrible movie. I remember liking it as a kid. The plot line, which involves two nerds building a machine to create the perfect woman by making a literal Barbie doll come to life—in the form of Kelly LeBrock—probably seemed like a viable way to make a friend, to me. But once I learned to exercise cognitive function, the problems with that movie became so obvious that I was embarrassed that I hadn’t noticed them previously. I mean, the emotional climax involves LeBrock, who comes equipped with magic powers, summoning a mutant biker gang to kidnap the “hot girls” so the boys can confront the girls’ abductors, learn about courage, and make the girls fall in love with them. What the hell is that?

We live in a deeply sexist culture, and that misogyny is broadcast and reinforced through every cultural vector available. It is internalized, by men and women, and it takes intentional reflection and deprogramming to even start to break free from its grip.

And yet, despite the best efforts of many thinkers and activists to get America to start treating half of its population as equal members of the country, our best shot at electing a woman president probably involves the Republicans’ finding a woman who is willing to kidnap other women to make men feel strong.

Senator Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the Democratic primary earlier today. The announcement was not surprising. She couldn’t convince white suburban voters that she could take on Donald Trump. She couldn’t convince white progressives that she could take on corporate America. She couldn’t convince African Americans in the South or Latinx voters out West or any broad swath of voters that she could do either.

Sexism played a role in the failure of all her arguments. Some people openly said that a woman couldn’t beat Donald Trump. Other people made the same point, but more subtly. And most people did the usual, frustrating thing where they said a woman could win, “but not that woman.” She was called “shrill,” she was called a “school-marm,” she was called a “snake.” She got criticized for not hitting certain candidates “hard enough” and then got criticized for vaporizing other candidates down to the molecular level. And when she actually talked about the sexism she faced, and all women candidates face, the conversation became about what she could do to overcome it instead of about what everybody else needed to do to stop it.

But what makes the Warren experience all the more frustrating is that she is the candidate Democrats asked for back in 2016. This is the candidate Democrats said they wanted when they were busy calling Hillary Clinton “inauthentic” and “uninspiring” and “pandering.” She was the candidate progressives used to explain that, while Clinton was a “corrupt, neoliberal shill,” they were totally not sexist and would vote for some other woman.

Elizabeth Warren was the “Stacey Abrams” of 2016: the woman, not in the race, that people who are voting for men say they would totally vote for if she would just run. I’m sure by 2024, these same people will find all sorts of problems with Abrams. I know they will, because they always find a problem with a woman once she’s actually asking for power.

No woman can be explicitly feminist enough while also nonthreatening to male swing voters. No woman can be laughably overqualified compared to her male opponents while still being a “new” and “fresh” face to lead the party. No woman can be strong, sweet, tough, flexible, brilliant, accessible, fiery, motherly, and attractive, but not distractingly so, all at the same time. And if a woman can’t be all those things, well, why take the risk of promoting a woman when we can find a perfectly mediocre man just lying around waiting for somebody to give him a chance?

Democrats will never agree on their perfect woman candidate, but Republicans will. That’s because, while Democrats are easily intimidated by a woman who runs to free other women, modern Republicans are quite comfortable with women who hold other women back. The essential qualification for a Republican woman candidate is that she must be willing to participate in the project of upholding the patriarchy. As long as she loudly and aggressively does that, Republicans will get to yes.

Republicans can get over being slapped upside the head for an inappropriate joke; what they can’t forgive is a woman who slaps them with a lawsuit so they can’t make the joke to the next woman who comes along. As long as Republican women are “cool with it,” one of them will eventually become the president.

The left offers no such pathway. In Dame magazine, Heather Digby Parton put it like this after Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016:

2016 did show that parts of the country were ready for a woman president. What a majority wasn’t ready for was a feminist president as the traditional voters in rural, white America came out strongly for her sexist opponent. This is why I believe that the woman who breaks America’s highest and strongest glass ceiling will most likely be a conservative like Margaret Thatcher or Teresa May in the UK. (You’ll notice that the Labor [Party] has never had a woman leader.)

Democrats will not elect a woman who supports the patriarchy. They also won’t elect a woman like Warren, who means to smash it. They will excoriate a woman as a “weak” “flip-flopper” who tries to do something in between. And one day we’re going to wake up and Nikki Haley or Ivanka Trump is going to be president, and we’re all going to wonder how the hell that happened.

It will happen because Republicans are comfortable with their sexism, while Democrats refuse to confront their own. Democrats won’t embrace misogyny like Republicans, but won’t examine it long enough to overcome it.

A woman absolutely can win the presidency. If she’s magic.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/warren-sexism-2020/

It was an attack on the media and an outrage that San Francisco police raided the Richmond District home of a freelance journalist who leaked police reports following the February 22, 2019 death of the late Public Defender Jeff Adachi.

The SFPD front office could learn who was responsible for the illegal release of these reports to a friendly journalist.

Instead, the cops tried to cover their tracks by arresting the journalist.  The arrest with discharged by the District Attorney.

Now the taxpayers can foot the bill for another instance of SFPD misbehavior.

San Francisco Chronicle 3.2.2020

The city of San Francisco has agreed to pay freelance journalist Bryan Carmody $369,000 for illegal police raids on his home and office last year after he obtained from a source a police report on the death of Jeff Adachi, the city’s public defender.

The late Jeff Adachi

The settlement of the claim is expected to be approved by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, paying Carmody back for his losses May 10 when police sledgehammered the front gate of his home in the Outer Richmond, held him in handcuffs for six hours and seized his phones, computers and other equipment.

The raids created an uproar among First Amendment advocates, prompting at least two other lawsuits, which are still pending.

“It is heartening to see that Bryan is going to receive some recompense for this outrageous violation of his rights,” said David Snyder, executive director of the San Rafael-based First Amendment Coalition, which filed a California Public Records Act request seeking communications between Mayor London Breed and the police about the raid. “It’s only proper that the city should be compensating him for his losses.”

Five search warrants were obtained from judges apparently for information about the unauthorized leak of a secret police report on Adachi’s death a year ago. Carmody, a stringer, obtained the report and sold it to local television stations, angering city officials who felt it was inappropriate to spread confidential information about Adachi after his untimely death.

Brian Carmody speaking with Society of Professional Journalists

Several of the judges have said police officers who submitted sworn affidavits applying for the warrants did not tell them that Carmody was a journalist and have since declared the searches illegal.

Under California’s shield law, journalists are protected from revealing their sources or unpublished information unless it can be shown that they obtained the information illegally. The law also prohibits judges from issuing warrants to search a journalist’s home or property to uncover news sources.

Police Chief Bill Scott defended the raid for two weeks, then acknowledged it had been wrong and apologized while apparently holding lower-ranking officers responsible.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/San-Francisco-settles-suit-by-journalist-whose-15100172.php

I am a regular Trader Joe’s customer, having shopped there for years. The inventory is uniformly good and the staff are always professional and ready to help the customer.

Joe Coulombe is to be thanked for founding such a successful organization.

Associated Press 2.29.2020

LOS ANGELES — Joe Coulombe envisioned a new generation of young grocery shoppers emerging in the 1960s, one that wanted healthy, tasty, high-quality food they couldn’t find in most supermarkets and couldn’t afford to buy in the few high-end gourmet outlets.

So he found a new way to bring everything to market, from a then-exotic snack food called granola to California-produced wines that rivaled anything from France. He made shopping for them almost as much fun as sailing the high seas when he created Trader Joe’s, a quirky grocery store filled with nautical themes and staffed not by managers and clerks but by “captains and mates.”

From the time he opened his first store in Pasadena in 1967 until his death Friday at age 89, Coulombe watched his namesake business rise from a cult favorite of educated but underpaid young people — and a few hippies — to a retail giant with more than 500 outlets in over 40 states.

A giant yes, but one that across more than half a century has never lost its reputation for friendly service from employees in goofy Hawaiian shirts, a newsletter that looks like it was published in the 1890s, and rows and rows of high-quality, moderately priced healthy food and great wine, even if you sometimes can’t ever again find exactly the same thing.

“He wanted to make sure whatever was sold in our store was of good value,” said Coulombe’s son, also named Joe, who added that his father died following a long illness. “He always did lots of taste tests. My sisters and I remember him bringing home all kinds of things for us to try. At his offices he had practically daily tastings of new products. Always the aim was to provide good food and good value to people.”

He achieved that by buying directly from wholesalers and cutting out the middleman, in many cases slapping the name Trader Joe’s on a bag of nuts, trail mix, organic dried mango, honey-oat cereal or Angus beef chili. He named several products after his daughters Charlotte and Madeleine and gave quirky names to others. Among them were Trader Darwin vitamins and a non-alcoholic sparkling juice called Eve’s Apple Sparkled by Adam.

He prided himself on checking out every vintage of wine from California’s Napa Valley, including Trader Joe’s standby, Charles Shaw, known as Two-Buck Chuck because it sold for $1.99. (It still does in the California stores, although shipping costs have increased the price in other states.)

After selling Trader Joe’s to German grocery retailer Aldi in 1979, Coulombe remained as its CEO until 1988, when he left to launch a second career as what he called a “temp,” coming in as interim CEO or consultant for several large companies in transition. He retired in 2013.

Joseph Hardin Coulombe, an only child, was born on June 3, 1930, in San Diego and lived on an avocado ranch in nearby Del Mar. After serving in the Air Force, he attended Stanford University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s in business administration. There he met his future wife, Alice.

John Rogers is an Associated Press writer.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/nation/article/Joe-Coulombe-founder-of-Trader-Joe-s-dies-15095449.php#photo-19107707

Chesa Boudin ran and was elected as District Attorney on a platform to reform and reprioritize the mission of his office.  During his first 51 days in office the new DA is keeping the promise to San Franciscans who elected him last November.

San Francisco Examiner 2.28.2020

District Attorney Chesa Boudin announced policy changes Friday aimed at reducing racial disparities in policing and sentencing.

The district attorney’s office will no longer seek charges for contraband found during “pretextual” traffic stops and will not charge status enhancements that increase jail sentences, such as those imposed for gang membership or for having three strikes, Boudin said Friday.

The directives are intended to push police to implement reforms that were recommended by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2016 including taking steps to reduce racial bias in policing, he said.

“We urge the police to continue getting weapons off the street and enforcing traffic laws, but to do so in a way that is not racially motivated, and that does not continue to undermine the relationship between the communities where most crimes are committed and the police and law enforcement agencies that are sworn to serve and protect there,” Boudin said.

DA Chesa Boudin announcing policy changes 2.28.2020

Boudin clarified that the pretextual traffic stop policy was aimed at minor infractions where contraband was seized during consent only searches. Exceptions would be made for circumstances where an officer was assaulted or the person evaded arrest.

Since 2016, the San Francisco Police Department has completed 16 percent of the 272 reforms recommended by federal authorities, including six related to racial bias. According to the DOJ report, African-Americans were pulled over in traffic stops in the City five times more than any other demographic, well out of proportion with their representation in the driving population.

Supervisor Shamann Walton, who represents the Bayview District and surrounding neighborhoods, said he personally experienced racial profiling when he was pulled over twice as a teenager. He said he was demeaned and called racial slurs by white officers.

“We know that racial profiling and implicit bias is real, we know that anecdotally and statistically,” said Walton, who came out in support of Boudin’s new policies. “Most racial profiling and implicit bias stops that happen in the city happen in my district. Police data will show you that disproportionately black people that look like me will be stopped and pulled over.”

Boudin promised to end the use of sentencing enhancements for perceived gang affiliations and third strikes as part of his campaign before he was elected in November 2019. He argued that said enhancements do not help recidivism rates, and said the focus of the criminal justice system should be on rehabilitation and healing.

In California, more than 45 percent of those serving a life sentence based on three strike charges are black, according to a Stanford University study.

“Enhancements sent me to the edge of hopelessness, I felt expelled from society,” said James King, who was sentenced to 25 years to life and received 5 years in enhancements in 2004, but had his sentence commuted by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2018.

Since taking office in January, Boudin has drawn harsh criticism from the San Francisco Police Officer’s Association, which even called for federal intervention to prosecute a man who was shot by a police officer when the DA’s office chose not to pursue charges. The union, which also spent more than $600,000 in a campaign against Boudin before he was elected, was characteristically critical of Friday’s announcement.

“In his short tenure, Chesa Boudin has demonstrated that he is a clear and present danger to the law-abiding residents, businesses and visitors of San Francisco,” said SFPOA President Tonya Montoya. “Chesa Boudin is emboldening criminals and we are all going to pay a steep price for his absurd policies.”

Boudin said he is willing to work with police in implementing the new policies.

https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/da-boudin-to-stop-charging-for-contraband-at-traffic-stops-gang-enhancements/

The Montana Supreme gets it after a local Judge told the accused, “It’s women who commit this crime most of the time…and they commit it big time.”

The Court reversed the sentencing and order a new trial.

And I thought we are living in the 21st century.  Someone forgot to tell the Montana jurist.  What is most appalling beyond the blatant sexism of the Judge is the fact embezzlement carries a 20 year prison sentence in Montana.

Punitive is the only word to describe such draconian sentencing.

The Missoulian 2.26.2020

Until the Democrat convention this summer I am solidly supporting Elizabeth Warren. I think she is the most credible and qualified candidate.

Should Bernie Sanders gain the Democratic Party nomination I will enthusiastically support him. It is appalling that the Mainstream Media is pounding on Bernie for making a favorable comment about Fidel Castro’s Cuba.  This line of attack will continue unabated all year.

Senator Warren is someone against whom the Bloviation Crowd will have a tough time destroying. The question for Elizabeth Warren, “Will she brawl with the Red Meat crowd?”

Perhaps Senator Warren is too decent a person to withstand the vicious state of American national politcs.   In the latest issue of the New York Review of Books is an article titled “Warren in the Trap.” The gist of the article is that Senator Warren is too much the academe and not the brawler.   Plus, she’s woman.  The last sentence in the article reads,

“When you’re in a knife fight you don’t ask to be liked.”

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/03/12/elizabeth-warren-in-the-trap/

San Francisco Chronicle 2.25.2020

Now that Sen. Bernie Sanders has the inside track for the Democratic presidential nomination, his rivals are attacking him for being a democratic socialist — warning that he wouldn’t just lose to President Trump, but could destroy Democrats’ campaigns up and down the ballot.

Pete Buttigieg and Mike Bloomberg, both running to the right of Sanders, have been especially vocal since the Vermont independent’s victory in the Nevada caucuses Saturday. Bloomberg likened Sanders’ views to communism, and Buttigieg said he could water down the Democratic Party’s perceived stance against dictatorships.

“There will be a lot of Democrats — from statehouse to Senate — who are on the ticket with him that would distance themselves from his ideology or some of his positions,” Addisu Demissie, who managed New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker’s presidential campaign, told The Chronicle’s “It’s All Political” podcast. “This biggest challenge with a Sanders nomination will be, how does the party come together?”

Still, Demissie said, “I think he can beat President Trump.”

While the attacks coming from the Democratic presidential field on Sanders may be new, more than 6 in 10 voters know that Sanders is a socialist, according to a survey this month by Yahoo News/YouGov.

But the survey found that many didn’t know the difference between the “socialism” of Fidel Castro’s Cuba and Sanders’ version of “democratic socialism,” which he says is the modern extension of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. The survey found that 38% of respondents said the two were the same and 38% said they were different. The rest weren’t sure.

The bigger challenge for Sanders: Only 35% of respondents said they would consider voting for a socialist.

The Cold War version of socialism in Castro’s Cuba is one of total government control over industry and the media. Sanders’ form of democratic socialism is more like that found in Scandinavian countries, where the government provides health care and free college.

“Most proponents of social democracy see it as a way of smoothing capitalism’s rough edges,” according to “Socialism: A Short Primer” from the Brookings Institution, “making it more humane, egalitarian, and protective, rather than replacing the market outright.”

“The important word in “democratic socialism” isn’t socialism, it’s democratic,” wrote 1988 presidential candidate and civil rights activist Jesse Jackson. “Sanders isn’t talking about making America into Cuba or Venezuela; he’s talking about extending social guarantees like those offered in most other advanced industrial states, invoking Denmark or Sweden.”

Sanders added the caveat that he condemned Castro for imprisoning political dissidents. “Unlike Donald Trump,” he said. “I do not think that Kim Jong Un is a good friend. I don’t trade love letters with a murdering dictator. Vladimir Putin, not a great friend of mine.”

Still, Buttigieg said Sanders’ praise of Castro’s literacy campaign glossed over the late Cuban leader’s atrocious record on human rights.

At Tuesday’s debate in South Carolina, Buttigieg said, “We’re not going to win these critical, critical House and Senate races if people in those races have to explain why the nominee of the Democratic Party is telling people to look at the bright side of the Castro regime.”

Bloomberg’s campaign points to a survey of voters in 42 battleground House districts conducted for his campaign. It found that “a plurality of voters (39%) say they will be less likely to vote for a Democrat for Congress if Sanders is the Democratic nominee for president and his socialist ideas are in the Democratic platform.”

Rep. Harley Rouda, D-Laguna Beach, who won a Republican-held Orange County district in 2018, told The Chronicle on Tuesday that “I’m a little concerned that anybody that far left is going to help me in my district — unless we can overcome the votes lost by additional ones he can bring in.”

Rouda, who has endorsed Bloomberg, said “it was hard to say” if Sanders could make up that difference in his district, where Republicans outnumber Democrats.

There are signs, however, that many Democrats don’t think Sanders is out of bounds. In a national Washington Post/ABC News survey of Democratic-leaning adults, 62% found Sanders to be “about right” ideologically — roughly the same as Buttigieg and former Vice President Joe Biden.

Some top California Democrats say they aren’t worried that Sanders’ ideology will drag down the party in November.

“As a strong supporter of Joe Biden, I have never bought that narrative,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said last week while campaigning with Biden in Las Vegas. “He’s always matched up second best (against Trump), and in some of the key states he matches up almost as well as Joe.

“When people say, ‘We need a centrist,’ or ‘We need a lefty person,’ this isn’t about where in that narrow band of Democrats they are,” Garcetti said. “It’s more about, ‘Who gives a feeling of hope to people who feel left behind?’ Joe does that, absolutely. I think Bernie does that for a lot of people, too.”

California Democratic Party chairman Rusty Hicks isn’t concerned about losing down-ballot races should Sanders be the party’s standard-bearer.

“I’m more focused on other things,” Hicks told The Chronicle.

Four first-term Democratic House members are up for re-election in Orange County districts that they took from the GOP in 2018. But the county’s Democratic chairwoman, Ada Briceño, said she didn’t think Sanders would hurt their chances. The county party has not endorsed a presidential candidate.

“I’m not of that opinion,” said Briceño, who is backing Sanders. “There is a certain energy that his candidacy brings. I’m seeing that among Latinos and among young people.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi steered clear of the controversy during a visit Monday to San Francisco. “I wish everyone well in this presidential race,” she said. “Whoever wins will be heartily embraced.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Rivals-rip-socialist-Bernie-Sanders-It-may-15083567.php#photo-19088159

Julian Assange is in the crosshairs of the American government because he made public the reality of how American leadership conducts its affairs.

The American government wants to imprison Julian Assange for life.

Julian Assange is someone who should be receiving accolades and not be the subject of prosecution and persecuation.

Hopefully the Brits will ignore the Americans extradition request and let Julian Assange continue to bring the goings on of government to the light of day.

Deutsche Welle 2.24.2020

A London court on Monday began hearing the case for the extradition of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to the United States, a day after hundreds of protesters marched through the British capital demanding his release.

Hundreds of people including Roger Waters, the co-founder of the rock band Pink Floyd, marched through London on Saturday in a show of support for Assange. A number of prominent German politicians and intellectuals also signed an open letterappealing for his release earlier this month.

In their opening remarks, both the defense and the prosecution teams laid out their cases.

Assange’s lawyer, Edward Fitzgerald, said his client should not be extradited as he would not get a fair trial and would be a suicide risk. Fitzgerald said sending him to the US would expose Assange to inhumane and degrading treatment, as well as disproportionate sentence and prison conditions.

Fitzgerald added the extradition request was motivated by politics. The indictment was brought, “not on the basis of new revelations, but because it had become politically expedient and desirable,” Fitzgerald said.

He said the United States’ attitude to Assange had changed when Donald Trump came to power and that the president wanted to make an example of his the 48-year-old.

Fitzgerald said in 2013 the US government under former President Barack Obama had decided that Assange should not face any action. But that in 2017, after the 2016 election of Trump, an indictment was brought against Assange.

Why the change? “The answer is President Trump came into power with a new approach to freedom of speech and a new hostility to the press amounting effectively to declaring war on investigative journalists,” Fitzgerald said.

The prosecution opens

The US government began outlining its case against Assange on Monday by arguing that the WikiLeaks founder is not a free-speech champion but an “ordinary” criminal who put many lives at risk with his actions.

Lawyer James Lewis, representing the US government, called WikiLeaks’ 2010 document deluge “one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States.”

“Reporting or journalism is not an excuse for criminal activities or a license to break ordinary criminal laws,” he added.

Washington has sought his extradition for years. Assange has fought being transferred to the US since he was arrested in April last year.

A decision by the London court is not expected before May 18.

Read more: Opinion: I am Julian Assange

‘Journalism is not a crime’

In 2010, Wikileaks published hundreds of thousands of secret papers on the internet, mainly pertaining to the Iraq war.

The papers contained sensitive information about US operations in the country, including the killing of civilians and the mistreatment of prisoners.

Assange, his lawyers, and supporters argue that the whistleblower activist would not receive a fair trial in the US.

The Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner Dunja Mijatovic has also urged Britain not to hand him over, saying that press freedom and the rights of whistleblowers are at stake.

“The broad and vague nature of the allegations…are troubling as many of them concern activities at the core of investigative journalism in Europe and beyond,” Mijatovic said.

Protesters carried signs that said, “Free Julian Assange,” and “Journalism is not a crime.”

Assange’s father John Shipton addressed the crowd. He said the long confinement had damaged his son’s health and that extraditing him the US would be the same as a death sentence.

https://www.dw.com/en/julian-assanges-extradition-hearing-begins-in-london/a-52496559

February 23, 2020

Trump v Bernie

I am at peace with myself

If a Fascist can destroy a Democratic Socialist in November it is the unwavering message that this is what Americans want.

The mainstream media is in “full blown freak out mode.” This is just part of the upcoming campaign to destroy Bernie Sanders and ensure Trump’s four more years.

During Weimar Germany (1918-1933) the mainstream Media facilitated the rise of Nazism. History repeats itself in America nearly 100 years later.

👽

Common Dreams 2.23.2020

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/23/msnbc-full-blown-freakout-mode-bernie-sanders-cements-status-democratic-frontrunner

Now that Bernie Sanders is beginning the inexorable march toward being the Democrats nominee it will be fascinating to read and view the treatment he is given by the Mainstream Media.

Excerpted from New York Times 2.22.2020

His triumph will provide a burst of momentum that may make it difficult for the still-fractured moderate wing of the Democratic Party to slow his march to the nomination.

LAS VEGAS — Senator Bernie Sanders claimed a major victory in the Nevada caucuses on Saturday that demonstrated his broad appeal in the first racially diverse state in the presidential primary race and established him as the clear front-runner for the Democratic nomination.

In a significant show of force, the progressive Mr. Sanders was leading his nearest rivals by a significant amount in early tallies, and The Associated Press named him the winner on Saturday evening.

His triumph in Nevada, after strong performances in Iowa and New Hampshire, will propel him into next Saturday’s primary in South Carolina, and the Super Tuesday contests immediately thereafter, with a burst of momentum that may make it difficult for the still-fractured moderate wing of the party to slow his march.

Mr. Sanders’s success, and the continued uncertainty over who is his strongest would-be rival, makes it less clear than ever how centrist forces in the party can organize themselves for a potentially monthslong nomination fight. The moderate wing is still grappling with an unusually crowded field for this late in the race, no clear alternative to Mr. Sanders and no sign that any of those vying for that role will soon drop out to hasten a coalescence.