Difficult to say how much Clinton’s “rigging” differs from previous back room political wheeling and dealing. I suspect it’s similar but perhaps on a more egregious level. We don’t always get a disgruntled former DNC leader telling all in a book. Neither do we get wikileaks confirming the leaked debate questions from Brazile to Clinton each election cycle. As I said though, I suspect Clinton’s rigging was on a similar-ish level to other years. However, in a change election cycle any suspicion of traditional wheeling & dealing is poison to the electorate. It’s also poison to Democratic operatives & voters post election.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/donna-brazile-needs-to-back-up-her-self-serving-claims
Donna Brazile Needs to Back Up Her Self-Serving Claims
A consideration by Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, who I have found to be a reliably intelligent and well-informed thinker. Got a good hold on it, best as I can tell.
No-one mentions the companion article advertised alongside, regarding the fact the fair unfortunate Blagojevich was railroaded and his convictions were prolly unsafe ?
Rod Blagojevich Is Asking for Mercy. His Case Is Stronger Than You Might Think.
He might point out that compared to Bil 'n Hil his alleged misdeeds were small potatoes and they are not yet incarcerated like the Prisoner of Chillon.
Back at the time I thought the whole thing extraordinarily vindictive, even if it is a rite of passage for Illinois Governors to spend time in the hole.
You yourself conceded in this thread that she’s heavily corrupt, and I (a Sanders supporter who regrets holding my nose and voting for her) knew it before she ran against Obama. I disagree with your statement, everyone but die-hard Hillary supporters (including long-time Democrats who didn’t like either of them) agreed at she was at least as corrupt as an average politician. The Honest Hillary movement got a lot of well-deserved derision.
So what you’re saying is that if anyone presents facts showing that her campaign was poorly run, you’ll just dismiss them as ‘hindsight’, which is absurd. It means that you’re saying St Hillary’s campaign was great, and that you’ll simply offer a blanket dismissal if anyone points out the ways that contradicts reality. That’s just putting your fingers in your ears and saying ‘na na na, I don’t hear you’, but it doesn’t change the fact that Hillary’s campaign was AWFUL and lots of us saw flaws in it when it was running, and even more are coming out now that people involved don’t have to toe the line.
And you switched to ‘experienced campaign experts’ from your earlier claim of ‘best and brightest in the field’. If anyone claiming to be a campaign expert thought that Hillary’s train wreck of a campaign, which managed to lose to Donald Trump, then they’re simply not the ‘best and brightest in the field’, period. If your consensus opinion is that a campaign that lost to Donald Trump was good, you’re not qualified and should take up a different line of work entirely.
This seems to actually be you admitting that Sanders had the nomination stolen, but adding that you don’t care because you don’t think he could have won the general election. Whether he could have won the general election is beside the point of whether Hillary stole the nomination, which she did.
The ‘lesser of two evils’ argument is traditionally weak, but is especially weak after an election in which the right-wing candidate who the left was supposed to support as the lesser evil managed to lose to an absurd charicature of a candidate.
The country will be run by billionaires whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican sitting in office. That was kind of the whole point of Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein.
The DNC and RNC are in complete agreement on major economic issues, because they answer to the same billionaires. They’re in agreement on foreign policy, because they both answer to the military industrial complex. Anyone who thinks the Democrats are still anti-war should ask themselves when they ever saw one fight against expanding the military budget or launching airstrikes into yet another country.
The only significant difference between the two parties at this point is on civil rights issues, because there’s no profit motive involved in gay rights, womens’ rights, etc. And to a lesser extent social programs, which Democrats will typically defend them in their current form, but won’t ever consider expanding them again. Obama even tried to cut them with his “Grand Compromise,” and the only reason he didn’t is that the far-right refused the offer because the cuts weren’t savage enough for their tastes.
What I’m hearing is that it’s “corrupt, but THAT corrupt.”
Bernie has more integrity in his finger.
I can’t articulate it, but people were thirsty for change. The Democratic Party has GOT to adapt. There’s so much sleaze, and has anyone noticed that Bernie hasn’t addressed this yet? He’s too busy fighting for what he’s committed in doing. Hillary voters, are you saying you would vote for Trump over him? Of course not. He had more appeal on non-Democrats than I think people here realized.
That said, I would STILL vote for Hillary over Trump… but she’s a sleaze-ball.
Emphasis added. Was there a 2-for-1 sale on non sequiturs at the Logical Fallacy story today? What does performance in the general election (a future event at the time) have to do with whether or not the nomination was “stolen”. N.B.: I’m not an advocate of the “stolen nomination” meme, but your argument, how shall we say… does not follow. Similarly, the Green Party has been there for some time and isn’t going away. Saying HRC would have won if the Green Party didn’t exist is a “things would have been different if they were different” argument. Yes, things would have been different, but they weren’t and they aren’t going to be. It neither proves anything nor informs us of what actions we should take going forward (unless you can figure out a way to ban the Green Party).
Bernie-ism is the new Lost Cause.
You’re forgetting another more important difference: the Republican party doesn’t believe in true democracy. It believes in a white Christian nationalist form of “democracy” and probably half of them don’t even believe in that. The reason Democrats don’t defend economic issues anymore is because progressive voters (like the ones who supported Sanders or Obama in 2008) sit out mid-terms and leave it to Democratic presidents to work with obstructionist congresses. Maybe if progressives would stop playing with their smartphones and get off their fucking asses and vote more than once every four years we wouldn’t have these kinds of problems.
And we’ll never know how many of those voters would have voted for Sanders if not for Clinton’s financial grip on the DNC. It would seem that those who believed the deck was stacked against Sanders in Clinton’s favor were right. Too bad because it turned out to be an enormous mistake for which we are all paying.
Well, Bernie never sold out! Nobody offered. Perhaps he has not been corrupted by power because he has hardly ever had any. Hillary is a politician, hence, corrupt? Likely. But the thing about that breed is political pragmatism, they count noses, if you have enough noses, you have their attention. If they listen, its because they have to, and that’s good news.
Which, I think…was his point, why he ran. To show that populist progressives exist in sufficient number to demand a place at the table, and make it stick. To underline the growing importance of small-donor fundraising coupled with idealistic enthusiasm.
(The Forces of Darkness have enthusiasm as well, but of another…kind. A countervailing force might well come in handy, don’t you think? Or don’t you?)
Bernie done good. Winning isn’t always victory, because progress is never final. Now that’s fucking deep, right there.
I wonder what would’ve happened if Bernie had been her running mate.
(I don’t mean that in some snide, pregnant-with-meaning sense where I of course think I know damn well what would’ve happened; I mean I genuinely wonder.)
We don’t know if anyone offered Bernie anything or not. But that’s not the point. The point here isn’t even accepting an offer, it’s demanding one.
Indeed it is, elucidator. Indeed . it . is.
I honestly think it would have helped. He probably would have increase voter turn out in those key rust belt states and shifted some and maybe enough votes from Trump to HRC.
I’ve never been one to be stifled by modesty. Abandoned by wolves, raised by Texans, it is not the way of my people…
HRC on Jan 21: OK, Bernie. Here is a list of funerals you need to attend. See you in 4 years. Don’t bother writing. I’m giving up e-mail for the duration.
Agreed… half of them would be fine with a Christian theocracy. The other half would go along, because otherwise, those damn gay welfare queens having abortions will keep getting away with it (over-the-top doublethink intended).
I hear this kind of dreck all the time from Democratic politicians, but it’s worse coming from a Democratic voter.
Why are they owed our vote, when they refuse to do anything to secure it? It’s the voters fault that they don’t introduce any bills to help anyone, and are leery of even stating their support for progressive policies? Blaming the voters for your failures has got to be the worst possible campaign strategy possible, and part of the reason the Democrats have lost 1,000 seats in the last ten years. They’ll continue to lose seats as long as they continue looking down their noses at those “purists” with their “litmus tests” and purging progressives from their party instead of embracing us.
Something’s gotta give, or the Democrats will keep up with “Vote for us to do nothing but sit in office, or Trump / the Tea Partiers / Bush wins!” and the Republicans will keep up with “Vote for us or crooked Hillary will bring her corruption to the White House!” and meanwhile both parties will continue being awful in their own ways.
I agree. And I like some of Bernie’s positions better than some of Clinton’s. But not others. He lost by a substantial margin. The primary wasn’t stolen from him, he just lost. And would have even without Superdelegatges And, as you say, he was wasn’t a Democrat - just used the name to have a shot (and thankfully not split the vote by continuing to General, though Clinton still didn’t win).
Nothing illegal happened. A private group did like one nominee better than the other, but we saw their emails and I never saw anything especially scandalous, though certainly I didn’t approve of every message.
Also, Brazile has a book out and the more she talks, the more this just seems like publicity for book sales rather than anything else. Especially given her own actions.
And, unlike others, I certainly don’t think Sanders would have easily walked away with a win in the General. Heck, Clinton’s campaign didn’t even try to mudsling, really (no real need), and that definitely would have happened in the General, and he had his own weaknesses.