It's weird this didn't come up in her book. that she secretly controlled the finances and strategy of the national party for the entire nomination contest. Hmm, weird. Dems like it was pretty important to "what happened".
Many secrets things are published in Politico at the time they happen. Super-secret.
I was not happy reading the Brazile piece. But the very next thing I read on the topic--posted not by a Hillary fan, but by a journalist--deflated the bubble massively. There's almost certainly something there in the Brazile story, but already the aura about it reeks of Clinton Rules.
I'm just here for Halford's rant. Halford?
2 that's weird that article says she wouldn't have access to the money until after she won the nomination, and yet it was in her campaign bank accounts the entire time.
donna brazile is a horrible strategist
she is clearly right about the dnc though - the debate scheduling was a farce for example
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2015/11/12/9699836/democratic-debate-schedule
some "Bernie would have won" news
2 this wasn't in the politico article
"The agreement--signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias--specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party's finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings."
bermie signed an agreement as well but it did not allow him to control the dnc https://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/bernie-sanders-2016-fundraising-dnc-215559
You can't pin much of the Trump victory on the DNC, given all the other factors, but you could probably pin a lot of the years and years worth of Democratic failure at the state and local level on them.
Hillary Clinton is not the president, and never will be, and almost certainly will never hold public office of any kind again, and while I can imagine working through the details of her campaign's failure could conceivably be interesting if I were a huge political-process nerd, it's hard to allocate my attention there when we have a huge turd-fire in the oval office and American democracy is in jeopardy and a country of 350 million people is being courted, with alarming signs of success, by a full-on fascist movement.
What I'm saying is I wish that the 2016 race and Clinton didn't have to be a subject of conversation anymore. Unless you can draw a straight line between lessons-learned-from-2016 to how we get a Democratic congress, I can't bear to hear it anymore.
Maybe this is a good place to re-ask my question about Glenn Greenwald, who is much much much more outraged about this bad-Hillary news than about Russian cyber-lopers setting the world on fire.
I realise that "no, talk about what *I* think is important" comments are bullshit but watching the love this story got today depressed me a bit and I'm counting on being forgiven by you bunch of nice people.
Maybe this is a good place to re-ask my question about Glenn Greenwald, who is much much much more outraged about this bad-Hillary news than about Russian cyber-lopers setting the world on fire.
My theory is that Putin has teh compromat on Greenwald.
8: The DNC is to a large extent controlled by useless grifter consultants that were there in the DWS years. They recently kicked out a bunch of people (not all of them bernie people) who aren't happy with that. It's not like this has no contemporary relevance, even aside from things like Elizabeth Warren coming out and saying Hillary rigged the primary, and the bitter feelings congealing into tribes now.
At this point I just assume any politics story that comes anywhere close to "let's you and him fight" came from Russia.
11: Probably good advice, but:
5.last: Yeah, let's believe that fucking moron fuck of a pollster now and set our strategy by him.
On the contract I await further reporting on when the various control provisions went in place as it was amended after she won the nomination.
Ya know what Donna Brazille and Elizabeth Warren? Maybe wait a few fucking days to do this until after important Dem statewide elections for fuck's sake.
Brazille is someone I had a fair bit of sympathy for given how she was so publicly trashed by assfuck for the ages Jeff Zucker who was not bothered by the antics of Lewandowski and Jeffrey Lord. But she clearly is not a good political strategist/surrogate and has not been for quite some time.
I hate everybody and everything.
8: Apparently Warren trying to do some level of cleanup: "spokeswoman for Warren says the senator agreed the DNC was rigged, not the primary process itself"
Subtle distinctions work so well in these political times.
8.last: the bitter feelings congealing into tribes now
Yep. I think the whole country has been driven insane to some degree by the last election. And I am certainly part of that problem.
Lord help me, I'll dive in. Why, who knows. Everyone was driven crazy by the 2016 election, including me. But to try to be rational:
The key context that is missing here is how the national democratic party, and state democratic parties, are funded and how and why they exist. These days, US political parties exist as institutions funded by a loophole in campaign finance law. A single individual can only give a relative small maximum amount to an individual campaign -- $2,700. But, you can donate a lot more to a "coordinated" campaign run by the party itself. Those donations aren't subject to the $2,700 limit. To the extent that the Democratic Party (or "DNC") or the individual state parties have any independent fundraising mechanism, or power, at all, that's it. They are entities driven by candidates steering their excessive donor contributions to help the Democratic Party as a whole. If you're rich, and you want to help out (say) Barack Obama, you are told to max out your $2,700 donation, and then give the rest to a fund reserved for the party.
Almost nobody gives a shit about giving money to the "DNC" per se, because what on earth does that get you, even emotionally? People want to give money to candidates, especially Presidential ones. So the money gets raised by the candidate, then gets given to the party, which then helps run a "coordinated" campaign to elect Democrats up and down the ticket.
For years (at least since the 1980s, certainly by the 1990s when I worked for a coordinated campaign) the Democratic party, as an organized entity, has primarily existed to run these "coordinated" campaigns.
Obviously, that means that the party is interested in working out fund-raising arrangements with individual campaigns, and especially Presidential ones. That's the single biggest thing a popular President or presidential candidate can do for the party -- convince a lot of donors to raise money through party/coordinated campaign donations. Those donations then get funneled to the party as a whole to help get Democrats elected across the board. Without that, the Democratic Party as an organized entity essentially doesn't exist. It's why when a new Presidential nominee is selected, that person takes over the DNC. Without the money raised through individual candidate donations, none of the numerous things that we supposedly want and expect the Democratic Party as an institution to do ever happen.
By the end of the Obama era, after 8 years and a President that could no longer be reelected, that mechanism ground down. Big Obama donors no longer had an interest in funneling "Obama" campaign money to the party. Nobody else was funding it. That's not a surprise. So where does the party money come from? The new Presidential candidates. And, in fact, that's exactly how it worked in 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, etc. etc. -- there are interim fundraising agreements between the DNC and the candidates, with the money raised used to elect Democrats in the general election. That's what Clinton entered into.
That was totally standard. In exchange, the only thing remotely unusual (supposedly "unethical") revealed by Brazile is that the Clinton campaign expected (apparently) some veto rights over party operations, though the Brazile account is incredibly vague about what those were and -- most importantly -- when they would go into place or how they would affect the primary, as opposed to the general election. Sanders also entered into a similar arrangement allowing him to raise money for the party, but didn't raise much, mostly because his over-limit donors put their money elsewhere instead of into the Democratic Party itself.
Of course,by late 2015-early 2016, it's totally unclear, that, besides Hillary anyone was raising money for party operations. So Hillary's crime was supposedly raising too much money for the Democratic Party, and asking for some (unspecified, but probably limited) control over staff personnel at the DNC itself in exchange. The crime is, apparently, excessive party-building.
If the money raised was used to actually rig the 2016 Democratic primary in Hillary Clinton's favor, I guess that could be bad. But there is no evidence whatsoever of a rigged primary. (In fact, Sanders did best in the most party-controlled elections, caucuses). That two of the ten (!) debates agreed to by the candidates were held on Saturdays is ... not evidence of much. Clearly, folks in the establishment Democratic party both expected and probably wanted in their heart of hearts Hillary Clinton to win the primary. Are we surprised? "Rigging" the primaries would not be OK. But that didn't actually happen. What we do know is that whatever "control" of party operations were exercised by Clinton people didn't actually matter materially for the primary.
So, in the end, we have a giant ball of nothing, pushed by ultimate party insider/hack Donna Brazile. It's interesting that she thinks she can get mileage by presenting herself as a Bernie supporter now in this context, which, I guess, tells you a lot about the Democratic party in 2017, most of it depressing.
You can't pin much of the Trump victory on the DNC, given all the other factors, but you could probably pin a lot of the years and years worth of Democratic failure at the state and local level on them.
It's true that state parties were unfunded and that Obama seems to have done a poor job of sustaining the party's internal infrastructure. But it's pretty hard to square this claim with the claim that Hillary Clinton committed an unethical crime by raising tons of money for the Democratic Party.
Isn't Brazile the person who gave Clinton the debate questions ahead of time?
Also, is there any way to interpret this as anything other than Sanders saying that women/minorities are not ordinary Americans?
"Yes. I mean, I think we've got to work in two ways," Sanders answered. "Number one, we have got to take on Trump's attacks against the environment, against women, against Latinos and blacks and people in the gay community, we've got to fight back every day on those issues. But equally important, or more important: We have got to focus on bread-and-butter issues that mean so much to ordinary Americans."
16: Yes, and why Zucker trashed her. The stupidest "scandal" of all time when you look at the details of what she "leaked."
And we all know about it from stolen emails.
16: yes you could listen to the interview and hear the next sentence.
18: I did. He launches into his standard pivot from non-economic issues to economic issues, saying the economic issues are as important or more important than the non-economic issues. He says ordinary Americans care about economic issues, and the pivot implies they don't care about the issues he listed before.
17: did Sanders get the questions ahead of time too? If not, that's unethical, and lack of ethics SHOULD be a scandal.
Do you honestly think Sanders in that pair of sentences honestly means either that ordinary Americans just means non-gay white men who don't care about the environment, or that ordinary people means the small number of people who do not care about any of those issues?
Or is it possible, that those are two separate ideas, and are not meant to be contrasted with each other. Is it possible Sanders means ordinary people in the same way he does every other time he uses the phrase rhetorically, as, opposed to the political and economic elite.
Seems like an interesting story. I'll keep an eye on it.
Isn't Brazile the person who gave Clinton the debate questions ahead of time?
In Flint, Michigan she told Hillary there would be a question about lead in water. Donald Trump thinks that is a scandal, but I don't think its really a scandal.
24- Well she told who would ask, got close to the exact phrasing and promised more questions, but I agree nothing scandalous.
Bernies medicare for all whites plan is a discrace that ignores the fact that blacks and hispanics are more likely to be uninsured https://www.kff.org/uninsured/state-indicator/rate-by-raceethnicity/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D he need to expand Medicare to cover all people not just all whites
The republican shit heels who currently control both houses have just proposed a tax plan with the potential to be spectac-u-fucking-larly unpopular but hey sure keep on banging on about alleged intra-democrats skullduggery.
Win back the house. Win back the house. Win back the house.
If any of this corpse-picking is relevant to that imperative task, bring it on down. Otherwise - count me wholly uninterested.
Why can't the fucking Democratic party debate something meaningful like how to present a positive vision for the country that's more than a bunch of triangulated policy positions, many of which I do support, but which aren't by themselves things that are easy to generate enthusiasm for when described in policy wonk terms. This is basically an argument over who gets the limited box seats to watch the spectacle that is the end of republican self-government.
I'm with 11. Guys, come on. The news that the Russians were posting fake pro-Sanders and anti-Clinton stories on Facebook in order to disrupt the Democratic Party LITERALLY BROKE TWO DAYS AGO. And now this (highly dubious and nakedly self-interested) story is the topic of conversation? Is there no one out there with an attention span? Do we really have to go back to Hillary the conspiring witch vs. Bernie the raving Jew?
30: are you saying Brazile and Warren are Russian stooges or useful idiots? If we have to wait for the political environment to be "OK," it will never be time to clean our own house. We can walk and chew gum at the same time.
We can walk and chew gum at the same time.
Yes, we saw that last year. You totally managed to not let the Sanders/Clinton divide do any damage at all to the campaign, which is why Russian efforts to exploit it were completely ineffectual. It was terribly impressive.
Also, arguing over what happened more than a year ago in a campaign that is now over is not "cleaning house". Miss Havisham did not have a clean house.
If this is connected to some institutional change to make the party more effective, that could make it more significant than an uncontested election for the board of a mosquito abatement district. If it's just yet more airing of primary grievances, save it for the deathbed memoirs.
32: define an acceptable way for a leftist to challenge a liberal in the primary. I suspect you'll always find a way to say the leftist did it wrong. The time to mount a challenge is in the primary, and any primary challenger will have dead-ender supporters. The dead-enders are stupid, whether PUMAs or Bernie supporters, but also inevitable. If it's not enough for the primary challenger to support the winner of the primary without a single dead-ender, you're basically saying there shouldn't be primaries.
"If it's not enough for the primary challenger to support the winner of the primary without a single dead-ender, ..." is unclear and could be better phrased, "If it's not enough for the primary challenger to support the winner of the primary but instead the only acceptable outcome is a dead-ender count of zero, ..."
define an acceptable way for a leftist to challenge a liberal in the primary. I suspect you'll always find a way to say the leftist did it wrong.
You seem to be managing fine just arguing with an emulation of me in your head, so I'm going to go and get a cup of coffee.
My first suggestion for "unriigging" the Dem Primaries is to work to get rid of Iowa* and New Hampshire** as the early states. They are just the states the doctor would order if you want to be the loyal opposition in nascent white supremacist kleptocracy. Overwhelmingly white media running around eating corn dogs and attending town halls and blathering on about civic duty. It's backwards-world Dorian Gray going up to his attic every four years to admire the Norman Rockwell*** picture hanging there.
*Michigan and Florida would be my substitutes. (Maybe you need a small one, so New Mexico or Colorado).
**Maybe you don't piss of New Hampshire right now for practical political concerns, but fuck Iowa hard.
***Obligatory Wikipedia trivia for NR: His later years were spent in Stockbridge, and Office Obie from "Alice's Restaurant" was the model for some drawings of his.
God, I'm sick of this self-proclaimed "leftist" bullshit. The next person who starts a sentence with me of the form "You liberals..." gets punched in the fucking face. In a world in which Glenn Greenwald can pretend to lecture us from the left, "leftist" means indulging in some fantasy about "Standing up to the Establishment, man," rather than any genuine policy difference.
I sort of feel bad for posting this, because I knew it's nothing but irritating yet sort of compels you to comment.
It's all heebie's fault! Get her!
Yes, Heebie. Why did you stomp on my meticulously annotated warwonkery with Russian disinformation? Do you have ulterior motives? Does anyone know if you ACTUALLY live in Texas?
40: If you hadn't posted, I wouldn't have the benefit of Halford's 14, which is exactly the analysis I've been looking for since the sorry broke.
Happy brokes are sorrily rare.
Simple rules for Democrats going forward:
1) In the primaries, vote for whoever you want.
2) In the general election, vote for the candidate with the (D) by their name.
That's it. In particular, follow rule 2 without exception. It doesn't matter if the candidate in rule 1 is not the candidate in rule 2. Do not vote for the Green Party candidate. Don't sit home and "protest" by not voting. Don't be this guy. This is not about you and your feelings.
In between elections, it's fine to argue about whether the process is fair and to suggest ways to improve it. You can finger-point and cast blame all you want. Just remember to always follow rule 2.
I'm actually pretty sympathetic to all sides in this conversation.
-39 reflects my deepest feelings on the subject. I used to be a *huge* admirer of Greenwald, but holy shit has he become awful.
-That said, I understand where 35 is coming from. How does one properly challenge the Democratic orthodoxy, which kind of sucks, in an age where the suckiness of the Democratic Party -- our party! -- is so far down on the list of important issues?
-11 is right on, though.
-I agree that the Sanders quote in 16 is phrased in an unfortunate way that is characteristic of Sanders, and with 22 that the quote doesn't reflect where his heart is.
-I bow down before the reporting and logic of Halford in 14, as we all must.
-12.last is the lesson of our times.
-and 40 is completely true. This is a trivial news event of a kind that tends to amplify stupid disagreements.
By the same token, I disagree with everybody in the thread, too. Rather than going down the list, I'm going to dispute the folks slagging Warren, who isn't picking over the bones of the last battle, but firing a shot in the next one. Given the alternative, we must all unite behind whatever the Democratic Party becomes, and Warren herself certainly will, but I'm hoping the party becomes more like Warren, and I don't mind her trying to game the refs and pull the process in her direction.
46.last: Sure. But maybe don;t do it less than a week before a general election.
22,46: After a certain number of iterations, it starts seeming like more than an unfortunate phrasing. I suspect Sanders is still to some extent stuck in the old-left mindset where class is the primary concern. As far as electoral success in the present-day US, that could possibly be the most effective strategy, but I reject it as unjust to everyone who isn't an able-bodied straight white man.
39: are you referring to me? If so, you liberals can go pound sand. If you want to let the odious GG define leftism for you, it's your loss.
31: Useful idiots. This is the worst possible time to do this, if it needed to be done at all. (Basically what ajay, dq, My Alter Ego and others have all said.)
47: Meh. This isn't an issue that moves votes. This incident isn't pushing Ralph Northam's message out of the news in Virginia, and if Democratic disunity, in some broad sense, discourages turnout or whatever, this example of it is trivial compared to stuff like this, which in turn is also pretty trivial in the big picture.
Does anyone know if you ACTUALLY live in Texas?
If I didn't live in Texas, I would not be quite this over the moon with joy at Lamar Smith retiring. But I am!
I'm pretty sure he was harassed beyond his ability to cope by 8-10 old lefty Austinites following him wherever he went with signs, etc, c/f the Indivisible 21 group. They've been indefatigable all year long. I didn't think it was having any effect, and he would easily waltz to re-election, and then OMG YOU'VE KILLED HIM! Like, if they could make this happen, maybe it's actually a flippable seat.
(Old Austinites in a small group, not 8-10 year old Austinites.)
I bet 8-10 year olds would be more intimidating, actually.
Well, he's the one who got gerrymandered in place to "represent" Doggett's constituency, no?
Well, 1/3 of it, I think. Maybe half?
I bet 8-10 year olds would be more intimidating, actually.
My friend teaches preschool, and every time she sighs about her twenty four-year-olds, I always say primly, "I also teach twenty-four-year-olds." I'm hoping this joke improves with age because I will say it forever.
Oh hey Thorn, you may have heard, but looks like the GOP tax plan might hit you most particularly.
48: Of course I'm referring to you. You already "you liberal"ed ajay. We're talking about Bernie Sanders, not Bob Avakian. How is "Turn the US into Denmark" at all outside the range of ordinary liberal policy ideas?
Here's some further reading
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/2/16599036/donna-brazile-hillary-clinton-sanders
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/donna-braziles-curious-account-of-the-2016-election/544778/
57: It'll actually be interesting to see what it does to private adoptions, but it will probably be disastrous for foster care ones. (Right now for instance I've been able to keep claiming Nia's adoption tax credit because the state deemed her as having special needs, whereas I'd have needed to have spent it all in the first year if she hadn't, which is easy to do when private adoptions cost more than 13K and so everyone who adopts a baby domestically or any child internationally counts on getting a portion of the money back at tax time.)
If you argue that leftist vs. (neo)liberal no longer has any useful meaning in the US context, then I'm a Democrat and you can choose between DINO and Joementer (after Lieberman).
62 I think you're missing the point.
Guys, we can have hypothetical Denmark, or hypothetical Denmark where a candidate who won't run again once gave an innocuous paid speech at an investment bank. This is our battle. This is our war. Let there be no prisoners until the other side kisses the ring.
59: I like the Atlantic piece. It really catches what's important about this and carries some real lessons about politics.
The fact that an operator like Brazile is willing to burn bridges with the Clintons, though, is important.
I have been somewhat skeptical of the otherwise universal consensus that 1.) the Clinton era is over, and 2.) we're glad about that. Brazile's expertise in this area is certainly greater than mine, so maybe I have to re-think.
Brazile's switch is a neat illustration of the way that political leaders are often not leaders in the commonly understood sense, but are responsive to which way the wind blows. The trick is to get the wind blowing in the right direction.*
*This is not a crappy analogy. It's a poorly constructed metaphor.
a candidate who won't run again
Am I the only person left on the planet who remembers that it was universally understood that 2008 was Hillary's swan song? In 2020, Hillary will be a year younger than the likely Republican nominee ...
Halford's 14 is very much appreciated (and the atlantic link in 59.2 says something similar).
46.last: Sure. But maybe don;t do it less than a week before a general election.
I'd say the opposite. I don't care too much about the timing of this, but I would hope that, once it gets hashed out, this can be put to bed. I think the claimed bad behavior isn's that serious looking backwards, but I'd support changes going forward to make the DNC more independent (with the recognition that an establishment Democrat with strong name recognition and fundraising is always going to have a lot of pull with the DNC).
However, the thing that pisses me off is when this becomes a narrative of free-floating corruption. I remember talking to a friend who is largely apolitical and a tech geek, and his summary of the 2016 election was, "the Republicans are loathsome, of course, but it sure seems like Democrats screwed Bernie Sanders, and that makes it hard to take them seriously."
It was exactly the response that anybody pushing a "both sides do it" narrative would be hoping to achieve. I'd like to have this fight, make whatever changes are necessary, and then have some clear way to delineate the fact that this is, ultimately, a minor inside-baseball story, and that the Democrats are not, as Toby Ziegler would say, "the gang that couldn't shoot straight."
"Halford's 14 is very much appreciated (and the atlantic link in 59.2 says something similar)."
It does?
It does?
No, I was wrong. I had imagined a paragraph that wasn't there (which maybe I saw somewhere else). I do think the Atlantic post is compatible with Halford's description, but not actually overlapping.
60: It was okay, but I heard the sequel was bad. I haven't seen a Stone movie in years, though.
46:
-That said, I understand where 35 is coming from. How does one properly challenge the Democratic orthodoxy, which kind of sucks, in an age where the suckiness of the Democratic Party -- our party! -- is so far down on the list of important issues?
The suckiness of the Democratic Party seems both indisputable and meaningless. "Suckiness" is vague.
1. The Democratic Party as an organization sucks because they're losing. They currently control no branch of the federal government and they're doing pretty bad at the state level too. And yet, the people in charge of it are mostly remaining in charge and it seems reasonable to at least partially blame them. Sure, racism, gerrymandering, Ailes, Citizens United, Putin, etc., but still, there has also been a little failing upward in the party, hasn't there?
2. The Democratic Party as a political platform sucks because it's so milquetoast. Its signature accomplishment is Romneycare. I realize the ACA was about as good as we could have got under the circumstances, and anyways refighting that debate is even dumber at the primary, but still. "Private insurance you're now required by law to buy, but don't worry, there are more regulations and subsidies to make it suck a bit less!" is not a good rallying cry. The party is too wonkish and too concerned with the limits of the possible to make an impassioned argument for big change.
I'm not sure what to do about either part of that, but probably different things about each part.
66
Am I the only person left on the planet who remembers that it was universally understood that 2008 was Hillary's swan song?
You probably are. After the 2008 primary she took a vacation for about a week and then she was a big Obama ally and Secretary of State. In 2020 she won't have held any office for over 4 years.
Here is a good article blaming obama
https://theintercept.com/2017/11/03/dnc-donna-brazile-hillary-clinton-barack-obama/
More on Obama shutting out the small donors
https://newrepublic.com/article/140245/obamas-lost-army-inside-fall-grassroots-machine
63: how so?
64: Slurring me with Chapo Trap House shit? You're better than that. Shame on you.
71.1 and 2: well said!
when this becomes a narrative of free-floating corruption
Which it was always destined to do, which is why I wish DB had shut up about it no matter how true or shocking it is, and why I wish we were not still having these kinds of conversations.
Now that we are, we may have to consider the unpleasant possibility that all along, Heebie has been a Russian bot.
"How is "Turn the US into Denmark" at all outside the range of ordinary liberal policy ideas?"
There are lots of democrats that don't want to do that. So they say things like "the era of big government is over" and "single payer will never happen". In fact they believe that government is inefficient and market solutions work best. I forget the name for that
I wish that I had not looked up "Chapo Trap House."
These days, I can't describe the relief I get from seeing a charmingly stupid vegetable pun as a headline on The Guardian instead of one more story about something actually awful or distractor-fake-awful going on.
I'm going to have to get out of this thread for my own mental health.
46.1: I'm glad at least to know this is a shared experience.
73 - not directed at you, and not meant as a slur. Just a plea, done in the stupid snarky style the internet demands, for this pointless destructive war to end and for people to eake up to how small the range of differences really are. I'm so tired of it.
If we have to wait for the political environment to be "OK," it will never be time to clean our own house. We can walk and chew gum at the same time.
How about not doing this less than a week before an election?
Aaaargh, sorry, I see that point has been made already.
75: So we've reached the point that "liberal" itself is a meaningless slur?
For the record: Kevin Drum's response to the Donna Brazile story:
But now let's add one more thing. Here is Brazile again on what she found aside from the JFA:I had tried to search out any other evidence of internal corruption that would show that the DNC was rigging the system to throw the primary to Hillary, but I could not find any in party affairs or among the staff. I had gone department by department, investigating individual conduct for evidence of skewed decisions, and I was happy to see that I had found none.And this:Today's lesson: Being quoted by Donald Trump means being MIS-quoted by Donald Trump. Stop trolling me.
#NeverSaidHillaryRiggedElection
-- Donna Brazile (@donnabrazile) November 3, 2017
Trump looks for a daily excuse to distract from his job. No, the primary system wasn't rigged! States control primary ballots. https://t.co/3vSwG6FY0o
-- Donna Brazile (@donnabrazile) November 3, 2017So Brazile herself, though she obviously disapproves of the JFA, says the primaries weren't rigged and there was no internal corruption at the DNC that favored Clinton. . . .
Seems like the place to ask: was there anything to that recent story about Clinton allies "purging" Ellison and Sanders supporters? It was impossible to tell from the initial reports if it was systematic and then the story kinda faded.
77: OK, cool. I'm a little confused about the intensity of feeling you, Walt and ajay have sometimes had on this topic. You all supported Ned Lamont when he primaried Lieberman, right? When do you support primary challengers (e.g., Feinstein)? My strategy has basically been to vote for the left-most viable candidate in the primary and then do the same in the general, which doesn't seem as if it would be controversial here.
78: I don't know why Brazile chose to release this now, and I'm sympathetic to that criticism. But at the same time, you'll have to admit that criticism of timing is a tactic that has historically been often used in bad faith, where it's never the right time.
From the same Drum post linked in 82:
In the end, then, this strikes me as almost classic Hillary: she did nothing wrong, but practically went out of her way to make it look like she was doing something slippery. I have never seen another human being do this so frequently. But, in fact, it looks like she really didn't do anything seriously unscrupulous here, and nearly everyone agrees that, in the end, the primaries weren't rigged in any serious way.
Every now and then, something is obvious to me and nobody sees it. Folks, just to be clear:
1. Hillary Clinton is, at this writing, preparing to run for president in 2020.
2. This ambition on her part is not ridiculous, and (at this early stage) she is one of the top contenders for the nomination and thus, the presidency.
This is self-evident to me, and impossible for everyone else to believe, so I can't even think of a productive way to argue the point. So instead, I'll talk about the sources of this mass delusion.
I think it's fairly easy to see why Hillary's opponents across the political spectrum are in denial. They don't want to see it happen, and they are happy to rely on superficial indicators (such as Hillary's own assertion that she won't run) to confirm their hope.
For leftist opponents of Hillary, especially, her loss to Trump shows her complete lack of fitness as a candidate -- a failure so obvious that even Hillary must understand it. Certainly the Democratic electorate gets it.
The denial that Hillary sympathizers engage in is more interesting. My theory: They are so traumatized by this defeat that couldn't bear the thought of going through it again. Just seeing her face on TV is depressing for them.
The last time I've seen something like this was in December 2015, when it was completely obvious that Trump was one of the few people who could win the Republican nomination, and nobody understood that. Again: Mass denial.
"So we've reached the point that "liberal" itself is a meaningless slur?"
I meant neoliberal. In the US context, liberals are fine with government intervention.
1. 14 is excellent.
2. Nice job of Brazile trying to sell her book by dropping her story right before the election. Always nice to try to undermine your own party right before an important election.
3. Here in Virginia, Northam seems to be fighting hard to make sure the more liberal wing of the party does not turn out. I am dying here in Va. Ug.
"I don't know why Brazile chose to release this now, and I'm sympathetic to that criticism. But at the same time, you'll have to admit that criticism of timing is a tactic that has historically been often used in bad faith, where it's never the right time."
She releases this now because she just finished writing her book which took her about a year.
88.3: Sorry, will. I am dying here in southern Maryland, too. I'd argue that Bill Clintonian-style dithering was the right strategy for his day, but it sure does seem like that day has passed.
I'd argue that Bill Clintonian-style dithering was the right strategy for his day
I'd argue against this (bad policy, ineffective short-term politics, and destructive long-term politics and movement building) but 86 already gave me an aneurysm.
Ah, gosh, I'm really sorry about 86. I should have thought about the medical implications of forcing people to confront this delusion.
70: I watched "Savages" a couple of years ago. It was dreadful. I'd rewatch "The Counsellor" again over that.
To be a bit more conciliatory, I get that Clintonian dithering wasn't an unreasonable response to some bad losses in the '80s and there was a lot of good-faith technocratic advice behind neoliberalism. It's also possible that no alternative strategies would've fared better against the talk radio/Fox News fueled right-wing.
94: Further in the spirit of conciliation, I understand that any counterfactual argument relies on guesswork. I wish Mario Cuomo had run in '92. We would have had a better test of our theories.
This Sarah Jones article goes into more detail about the inherited problems in the DNC
https://newrepublic.com/article/145659/dnc-broken
People want to read Sanders in stupid ways, in a desperate attempt to prove he's secretly racist or something, in order to claim that Hillary is meaningfully to his left on ANY issue. But she isn't because he's a democratic socialist and she's a neoliberal.
Also Hillary is definitely planning to run again.
If anybody ever asks me to explain what it felt like to go through the 2016 primaries I will point them to 98, which replicates that experience in brief.
And I'm once again reminded why I stopped commenting here, and why commenting is not just a time-wasting hobby, but actively destructive for American politics. Whether you know it or not, you all (including Heebie, for putting up the thread, and me, for commenting) are part of the problem, not the solution. You're probably mostly decent people, do something else with your lives. Bye.
84: I have voted for the most left-wing plausible candidate in every primary since forever, including Sanders.
For me, the intensity is because it means that there can be no good faith disagreement on either policy or on tactics. It leads to every argument being settled on whether or not it's "left-wing", and it leads to political suicide because no compromise with moderates is possible.
For example, some people argue that the effect of free college tuition is actually regressive. Is it? I don't know! I default to assuming that free college is a good idea, but it's possible that somebody could believe it in good faith. The political challenge of our age is not that nation agrees on ends but disagree on means, but a revolutionary political party determined to subjugate us.
It's also possible to disagree on tactics. The Democrats tried to expand the welfare state in 1992, and it led to the end of 40 years of Democratic control of Congress. The founding event of the modern wingnutty Republican party is the 1994 midterms, where they rode obstruction to power. The Democrats actually did expand the welfare state in 2009, and prompted ceded control of the House to a Republican party that was completely discredited two years before. It's possible to look at this evidence, and think that in good faith that the voters demand moderation.
Whether you know it or not, you all (including Heebie, for putting up the thread, and me, for commenting) are part of the problem, not the solution. You're probably mostly decent people, do something else with your lives. Bye.
At some point people, collectively, will need to figure out how to argue about politics on social media in a productive way. I'm not quite sure what that looks like or how to get there, but I think it's a problem that needs to be solved and which will involve many more stupid internet fights about politics as part of the process.
[NARRATOR] Robert Halford returned to Twitter, where he promptly got involved in a 115-tweet argument about Android's cheeseburger emoji.
101: I think our different views on this result from the fact that I read/comment here in order to understand stuff, not to solve anything. (Unless someone is asking the Mineshaft.)
Comments like 98, for example, have their drawbacks, and if you have too many of them you end up being Crooked Timber, but I think it's useful to see that sort of thing every now and then.
It's possible to look at this evidence, and think that in good faith that the voters demand moderation.
This sparked an idea for me. People talk about it being easier to establish a welfare state in a small country (like Denmark) because the scale is much more manageable.
I wonder is another challenge to doing that in a large country (in addition to the logistical challenges of operating a social program on a much larger scale) is that when you have a system which, on aggregate functions reasonably well and delivers solid outcomes* but which has real problems and elements of dysfunction those elements are large enough that (a) they become political problems and (b) have the political power to protect their own (dysfunctional) interests. In other words it becomes harder to establish that they are exceptions in an otherwise functioning system.
I feel like that's mostly correct, but needs some polishing.
* For example, the VA hospital system or US public schools
I just want to say that I for one benefit from Halfword's explanation and I have less than zero interest in internal Democratic wrangling.
Halfword may be the happiest accident this phone ever had
Halfword may be the happiest accident this phone ever had
Great. Does he have a cousin Trevor Thirdword?
104: Cheeseburger emoji talk is for the rubes. We should be talking about the problem with the Android beer emoji.
102: Huh, I pretty much agree with everything you said. How much are we all projecting comments from elsewhere onto what we read here, making it impossible to say anything without it having other layers of meaning attached, many of which we don't intend?
For example, in 39, you said you're sick of GG types and in 58, you said you were talking about me and mentioned Denmark. Then Halford in 64 said, "guys, Denmark ...," sarcastically channeling what sounded like phrases infamous from CTH. But I don't like GG, and apparently Halford wasn't channeling CTH or even referring to me.
NBC has found a relevant MOU - PDF here - written by HFA (Mr. Mook) to DNC. Important paragraph:
Nothing in this agreement shall be construed to violate the DNC's obligation of impartiality and neutrality through the Nominating process. All activities performed under this agreement will be focused exclusively on preparations for the General Election and not the Democratic Primary. Further we understand you may enter into similar agreements with other candidates.
Its possible people want all sorts of things. But I will point out that Obama ran a national campaign that was to the left of how he planned, or at least was able to govern.
I think folks are aware that the current political situation has led to declining conditions/security for most people over the previous generation. And for this reason they are turning to increasingly radical voices.
Also, free collage would only be more regressive than every other spending program, if it was being done instead of some other welfare benifit.
14: I do sort of wish that the Party meant something more, maybe it did when Unions were stronger. I had an elderly English friend who was a member of the Labour Party - they even had social outings.
I am registered as a Dem, but I'm not active in the State party, partly because I dislike the House leadership, and I don't want to be a professional politician.
Howard Dean tried to reform the Party, and that didn't last, but I'd really like to be connected and involved with something that was more lasting than an individual campaign.
115: Yes. After the election, I looked up the local party meetings and put them on my google calendar, so I'd be able to attend. There are several opportunities a month to attend various democratic club gatherings in my town.
But, somehow, carving aside a few hours to go talk politics to people is below the bottom of my list. I've chosen more than 20 times to not attend the regular meetings. It's not just that I want to sleep in longer than 9 am on a Saturday and avoid a meeting in a Denny's... I have a real reluctance to get sucked in, despite wanting success for the groups. (I suspect it's like the endless fundraising emails that I delete instead of unsubscribing.)
"Also, free collage would only be more regressive than every other spending program, if it was being done instead of some other welfare benifit."
free college isn't what I would pick but it isn't horrible. part of a nutritious breakfast!
howard dean is bad now
https://theintercept.com/2016/01/14/howard-dean-lobbyist/
102-Last, it might also be that anyone who is backed by a major party has a shot, and that ideology only plays a minor role, but that people unencumbered by conscience have an edge.
I thought it was funny that DB brought back that obsolete canard about money laundering from that old politico back issue. One of you guys should tell her you comprehensively disproved it.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774
"Right around the time of the convention, the leaked emails revealed Hillary's campaign was grabbing money from the state parties for its own purposes, leaving the states with very little to support down-ballot races. A Politico story published on May 2, 2016, described the big fund-raising vehicle she had launched through the states the summer before, quoting a vow she had made to rebuild "the party from the ground up ... when our state parties are strong, we win. That's what will happen."
Yet the states kept less than half of 1 percent of the $82 million they had amassed from the extravagant fund-raisers Hillary's campaign was holding, just as Gary had described to me when he and I talked in August. When the Politico story described this arrangement as "essentially ... money laundering" for the Clinton campaign, Hillary's people were outraged at being accused of doing something shady."
Looks like Donna Brazile is going to be on the Tucker Carlson show tonight. Presumption of good faith error eroding rapidly.
119 is utterly misleading. (It did remind that it was Ken Vogel story from when he was at Politico; he is now possibly the most butthurt NYT politics reporter and an important cog in its campaign to become the tabloid of record for our nascent white supremacist autocratic kleptocracy.)
I admit that I wonder what percentage of threads here are actively destructive to American politics. Even the completely silly ones? Especially those? Moral fiber unraveling? Was that Burma-Shave thread a gateway drug for the harder propagating-Russian-disinformation stuff?
Why do I kiss you
then just run?
I'm a creature
of diamond-hard fun
Burma-Shave.
Losing an election
Makes you feel dumb
On the other hand
I have four fingers and a thumb
Burma Shave
120 apparently not correct. Oops.
I don't think Clinton / DLC "dithering" was merely a tactical response to the Reagan and '94. Most of the left-of-center elite of the last 30 years has really believed that tinkering around the edges of the increasing commoditization and market-exchange of everything is the most that governments should do for people. And they've been richly rewarded for it after leaving office.
I skimmed through this thread very quickly, so perhaps this has been mentioned, but the Joint Fundraising Agreement (JFA) that both Hillary and Bernie campaigns signed with the DNC ... the Hillary one has apparently been unearthed, and it says nothing about giving her people control over the DNC.
According to NPR, there was an additional agreement to that effect. I feel that we must see that -- and, importantly, see its date -- before judging that Brazile's story is correct in all particulars. According to Brazile's own testimony, as it were, it's normal for a candidate who's won the primary (for all intents and purposes, even if the Convention hasn't yet crowned him/her) to exert control in the DNC.
In other words, if the alleged additional agreement significantly predates Hillary's winning of the primary, okay, we can talk about undue influence ("rigging") of the election. Need to see that additional agreement.
I can't believe that we chose to relitigate the 2016 Democratic primary at the exact moment that Halford had tentatively started commenting again.
This is what braille said :
The agreement--signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias--specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party's finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.
which is a summary of this in the agreement :
HFA's obligations under this agreement, and the release of the Base Amounts each month are
conditioned on the following:
1. With respect to the hiring of a DNC Communications Director, the DNC agrees that no later
than September 11, 2015 it will hire one of two candidates previously identified as acceptable to
HFA.
2. With respect to the hiring of future DNC senior staff in the communications,
technology, and research departments, in the case of vacancy, the DNC will maintain the
authority to make the final decision as between candidates acceptable to HFA.
3. Agreement by the DNC that HFA personnel will be consulted and have joint authority over
strategic decisions over the staffing, budget, expenditures, and general election related
communications, data, technology, analytics, and research. The DNC will provide HFA advance
opportunity to review on-line or mass email, communications that features a particular
Democratic primary candidate. This does not include any communications related to primary
debates - which will be exclusively controlled by the DNC. The DNC will alert HFA in advance
of mailing any direct mail communications that features a particular Democratic primary
candidate or his or her signature.
Nothing in this agreement shall be construed to violate the DNC's obligation of impartiality and neutrality through the Nominating process. All activities performed under this agreement will be focused exclusively on preparations for the General Election and not the Democratic Primary," the memo states.
"Further we understand you may enter into similar agreements with other candidates," it continues.
Apparently the GOP tax bill is so much a sop to wealth that it's not so great for millionaires who only have their salary.
101: Halford, of course you are right, you almost always are (I still think you go too easy on Jean Calvin's Calvinism; but we can agree to disagree on the impact of Reformation theology on the socio-cultural development of Northern Europe and America, which nobody even cares about anymore, surely?). But we need you here in this shockingly dumbed-down, and now much-degraded, simulacram of what used to count as the public sphere. Please come back after a week or so, I guess, is what I mean to say.
Oh my . . . Donna Brazile is crazy (or misrepresenting what happened at the time).
Former Democratic National Committee head Donna Brazile writes in a new book that she seriously contemplated setting in motion a process to replace Hillary Clinton as the party's 2016 presidential nominee with then-Vice President Biden in the aftermath of Clinton's fainting spell, in part because Clinton's campaign was "anemic" and had taken on "the odor of failure."
... [Brazile details] secret deliberations over using her powers as interim DNC chair to initiate the process of removing Clinton and running mate Sen. Tim Kaine (Va.) from the ticket after Clinton's Sept. 11, 2016, collapse in New York City.
Brazile writes that she considered a dozen combinations to replace the nominees and settled on Biden and Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), the duo she felt most certain would win over enough working-class voters to defeat Republican Donald Trump. But then, she writes, "I thought of Hillary, and all the women in the country who were so proud of and excited about her. I could not do this to them."
There is no possible way that would have worked out well.
There's no way that happened. There's no way she ever doubted that Clinton would win. Absolutely no one doubted Clinton would win.
140 seems right to me -- and makes it seem like her upcoming memoir is not complete trustworthy.
140: I won't say that I doubted it exactly, but I definitely thought people significantly underestimated Trump's chances. I could see someone predicting a Trump victory in good faith. But not Brazile.
Her account has taken on the odor of bullshit; I have decided to replace her.
Weird, Matt Taibbi seems to believe in the obsolete money laundering story too. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/taibbi-why-donna-brazile-book-on-hillary-clinton-primary-matters-w511099