There are different kinds of “big deals”. The biggest of big deals would be if the DNC was somehow interfering in the voting process or performing dirty tricks - these messages don’t show anything of the sort, and it’s basically not possible to imagine how these internal messages could have cost Sanders any votes, much less the primary.
However, it’s also the DNC’s job to not piss off major factions of the party or generally to call attention to themselves in a negative light (and even though they apparently didn’t do the things they were talking about, even floating some of these attack ideas was really dumb.) For this political malpractice, heads must roll.
Well you posed a solid question, which counts for something.
Our democratic system is flawed, in that it forces voters to make awkward choices. If we had proportional representation, it would usually be reasonable to just pick your favorite candidate or the party that best represented your own. Then that party, which might only have 23% support, would go on to make the compromises.
But we have what we have. So Sherrerd’s answer is sound.
The reaction to the emails was largely overblown. That’s not to excuse the content but the only people who could see them as “rigging” the primary are people with an incredibly vast definition of what counts as “rigging”.
That said, the tone and content of them varied between “embarrassing” and “inexcusable” and so something had to be done. I’m pleased that there was a swift resolution a day later rather than this dragging around like a dead fish all week. Of course, I’ve never been impressed with DWS anyway so offering her scalp (a prize the Bernie Camp has wanted for months anyway) is a cheap price for stability in my book.
It is like Hillary made a deal. Sanders gets planks inserted into the Democratic platform, plus the termination of DWS, and Clinton gets his endorsement.
Rigged? Maybe the superdelegate system deserves more scrutiny than this private plotting, but it is a done deal now.
Trump made a bid for Sanders’ supporters. But only one candidate can get his endorsement- if he doesn’t go all, “vote your conscience”, that is.
I wasn’t making jokes in the first place. It was a serious question.
The defining characteristic of communism is common ownership of the means of production. The defining Characteristic of capitalism is private ownership of the means of production paired with a goal of producing profits. While the presentation of capitalism can and sometimes does entail greed, greed is not capitalism’s defining characteristic. In my experience, when conservatives denounce things as communism, they are talking about things which can not reasonably be interpreted as “common ownership of the means of production.” Certainly, some things can be (e.g. the aforementioned medical facilities & doctors owned/employed by the U.S. military), but conservatives rarely (or, perhaps, never) denounce anything as communism which could, in fact, be interpreted as an example of it. Funding the means of production is simply not the same as common ownership of it. For example, while Bernie Sanders advocated “free college”, from my understanding, he was advocating funding to pay for education, not federal ownership of all university systems. There is a distinct difference.
‘Communism’ is conservative code for extreme left and recalling the McCarthy days, painting their target as an enemy of the American Way™. Most would have no idea what it actually means.
I don’t come around here much so I’m late to the thread but ------- after President Obama won his second term my prediction was that if Hillary ran, if she had any interest in running, she would be the candidate for the Democrats no matter what it took to get here there. And no matter who the Republicans put against her, she would win. OK ------- so I’m halfway there.
Julian Assange is the worst kind of shithead. He operates under the pretense of being some sort of truth telling martyr, when in reality he doesn’t care about whom he harms. He’s probably doing this under the direction of the Ecuadorean government. After all, they’ve got an axe to grind with the US, and since it’s them standing between Assange and a London jail cell, he probably knows what to do to keep his landlords happy.
I’m completely confused by this controversy. What’s the big deal? The DNC preferred Clinton and worked against Bernie.
How is this any different from the RNC trying to derail Trump? Hell, Romney was out there giving press interviews crapping all over Trump. Seemed pretty obvious (to me) the RNC was behind it.
What the hell is this? Are we supposed to pretend politics is all sweetness and nice? Let’s all sing Kumbaya and be fair. Really?
More of the ‘rigged’ crap to keep Bernie Bros believing that somehow, in some alternate universe, Hillary will step down and he’ll become the fairy-dust candidate. Also, there’s the narrative of Bernie voters who will refuse to vote for her in the general because of how badly he/they have been treated. Sound and fury, signifying nothing.
This week should effectively kill that for all but the most delusional of Bernie supporters.
Lets’ see. First the Russians hack the DNC for all of their opposition research data on Trump. Then they, through Wikileaks, dump all this stuff which hurts the DNC, Hillary and, by extension, helps Trump.
Not to worry, Trey Gowdy’s committee is on the case! Putin made the move to help out Trump because Benghazi! Details are fuzzy at this point, but all will be revealed!
This. If it is, in fact, true that they take pledges of neutrality (I don’t actually know whether it is), then this is a big deal; they were derelict in their duties and need to go. It’s not the HUGE deal it would be if there were any reason to suspect that their interference actually changed the outcome of the election, but it still has to be dealt with harshly. If an umpire is caught on tape talking about how he hates a particular team and will try to make them lose, he’s going to lose his job regardless of whether he actually did make any bad calls against that team.
I am shocked and appalled that Hillary has turned around and appointed DWS to a “honorary” post in her campaign. She doesn’t deserve to be honored, she deserves to be removed from any positions of power within the party.
Hillary, like so many of her supporters on this board, actually seems to be going out of her way to insult her opponent’s former supporters and discourage them from supporting her in the fall.
The reason the Republicans ended up with Trump as their candidate isn’t that the RNC neutrally applied the rules, it’s that their rules are flawed compared to the Democratic rules. Where the Democrats allocate delegates in each state proportional to the vote in that state, the Pubbies’ procedure varies from state to state, with many states being winner-take-all, meaning that a candidate can rack up lots of delegates without actually winning states. If the GOP had used Democratic rules, they would have had a contested convention, with superdelegates holding the balance of power, and someone other than Trump almost certainly would have been nominated.
The argument for these rules is that they should produce a winner earlier in the process, allowing more time for the party to unify around the candidate. The argument against them has scary hair and short fingers, and is IMO markedly more compelling.
I have a new thread talking about this, but an article in the NYT by David Sanger suggests that the hacking was carried out by two Russian state agencies, and these articles released specifically to help Putin admirerer Donald Trump.
