May 17, 2016

The (false) Nevada Talking Points

Man, there sure is a lot of anger over what happened. Here are the talking points:

1. Hillary already won. The Clark County "flip" a while back was a fluke/fraud by Sanders people

Why it's false:
The Nevada caucuses are tiered. Caucuses at the precinct level (1) choose delegates for the county level, and (2) proportionally assign twenty-three delegates for the national convention. Caucuses at the county level choose delegates for the state level. The caucus at the state level chooses twelve more delegates for the national convention (which is yet another caucus, BTW). Somewhere in that mess are some at-large districts.

The folks claiming that the flip is bogus have offered up only one piece of evidence: the fact that it happened. They assume/claim that a flip simply should not be possible.

Since it's a caucus, there's realignment. In a close race (this is a close race) it's entirely possible to flip the "winner" from one level to the next with nobody doing anything evil, illegitimate, or wrong. The flip at the county level wasn't bogus, it was just an artifact of that system. The flip is a good indicator that it's a bad system, but it is not an indicator of cheating.

2. Ignore/deny actions by the chair (Roberta Lange)

Plenty of examples around here. Here's one. Here's another. In both, there's simply no mention at all of the chair's actions.
It's fine because it's not technically illegal or something.
And there's this thing. It's just a bait thread.

Why it's misleading:
Even if it won't change the outcome, the appearance of cheating still delegitimizes the process. In a democracy, an election that looks like bullshit robs the victor of power. Besides, you can bet your asses this will be played up in the GE and midterm to no end, especially if Trump loses. Roberta weakened the whole party. If the DNC doesn't rectify it openly, the damage will take a few election cycles to undo.

3. Pretend the Sanders people got pissed off for no reason

You can see this in some of what I've already linked above. It pretty much goes hand-in-hand with glossing over Roberta's behavior.

That was when the vote to approve the rules as written — Roberta's Rules versus Robert's Rules, as some Sanders backers dubbed them — was conducted by voice vote. The motion, seconded by a Sanders supporter, passed — which is when the room, in Ralston's phrasing, "erupts." Ensuing speakers, including Sen. Barbara Boxer (a Clinton supporter), were interrupted by a vocal group of Sanders supporters at the front of the room.

Why it's bogus:
Anger is an expected response to being cheated and shat on. Boxer should know better than to talk down to an angry crowd. In fact, I know she knows better--she was just egging them on and it worked.

4. Claim that the delegates who were removed were removed for good reason

Why it's not true:
We don't actually know why they were removed. Ostensibly, it's because they were not registered as democrats, but we don't know how that happened. They had to have their credentials checked earlier in the process, so the fact that they made it to the state convention at all means they were registered as democrats at some point. There's a statement from one person purporting to be a delegate who changed his own registration. It's not verified at all, but even assuming that it's true it only explains one of the 60+ delegates removed.

So we don't really know what happened. With the odd pattern of democrats getting their registrations purged all over the US, it seems a teensy bit suspicious.

5. Call Bernie's people bullies

A smattering of threads from GDP letting us know what irrational monsters we are: http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511979801 http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511979137 http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511978506 http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511981063
It would also appear that chalk-marking is worse than face-punching now.

Why it's false:
It's just a guilt by association argument. "THIS asshole likes your guy, so you should stop liking your guy." I made a thread questioning it a little while back, and got the expected responses from the expected responders.

6. Assert that Bernie has't done enough to reign in their behavior.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511979926

Why it's bullshit:
First, it's absurd. Nobody can possibly have enough time to denounce all the bad behavior of millions of people. But beyond that, it's just a moving target. If he denounces it they'll just demand he denounce it harder. Case in point: he denounced "BernieBros", but the loudest complainers gave him zero credit and still make the same attacks today. It's a game with no way to win.

Democrats in power are making their own party weaker and more fractured by the day. We're expected to believe it's all the fault of Sanders while we're simultaneously to believe he's ineffectual and powerless. That's just amazing! Meanwhile the republicans are rapidly stitching their Frankenstein monster back together and gearing up for the GE where everybody is allowed to vote.

Good luck in November; you're going to need it.

May 16, 2016

'Bernie or Bust' is not a tantrum

Personally, I still intend to vote for Hillary in the GE if she gets the nomination. I wonder how many will angrily reply before reading even this far.

We should recognize where BoB comes from.

Many of the Sanders voters are new democrats (myself included) who are not strongly connected to the party. My beliefs align quite well with the stated democratic platform, but I've been on the short end of plenty of policies from both major parties and feel zero affection for either one. I know I'm not alone. Arguments to the effect of "We just need a majority of democrats," with no specific end-game don't carry a whole lot of sway with my crowd. Remember when the democrats got a supermajority and proceeded to do none of what they said they'd do with it (hence the 'shellacking' in 2010)? Many older voters remember, and many younger voters know only today's do-nothing congress. So the vague promise of a democrat in office leading to a brighter future for some undescribed reason simply does not impress without some specifics.

Clinton doesn't inspire. Clinton's campaign, at its core, has no actual message. Sure, first female president sounds like a good symbol, but the rest of the campaign is primarily "I'm not." Not Trump, not conservative, not a republican, not not not. No "we", and no indication of what role the rest of us could play in her presidency. On its own that can't inspire any voters who haven't already decided to vote for her. So the rest of the message is to fear the alternative. To voters suffering now, watching their lives slide downhill now, and knowing tomorrow will be worse, it's hard to get super excited about somebody promising to be marginally unterrible.

Obama ain't that great. I don't think he's a bad president, but he has some real flaws and people who bring them up aren't doing it out of spite or whatever. He's the president; those flaws matter. Whistle blowers have been persecuted and the government is too secretive. Drone strikes kill civilians. Murdering our own citizens because they're deemed terrorists without a trial is frightening. Deporting families is unconscionable. Wall street was never prosecuted and our economic recovery is so lopsided it might as well not have happened for most people. We're still fighting endless, unofficial wars. He never did find his comfortable pair of shoes. You're telling people pissed off about any of that mess that Hillary will keep the gravy train rolling?

The DNC is awful. It was obvious since before Sanders began his run that the DNC would collude with Clinton. Sharing field offices with her campaign staff, the back-door money hose, DWS immediately turning on the Sanders campaign after the data breech, and of course, the super delegates pre-pledging by the hundreds. Euphemize it all you want, the corruption is as brazen as can be.

Hillary supporters are just mean. "We don't need your vote." "We don't want your vote." "Aww, no unicorn for you." "It's math." "Feel the math." "It's math, stupid." "That's where the boys are." "You aren't a real democrat." "Grow up." "Get over your tantrum." "Stop acting like a spoiled brat." "We're gonna need more foil." "You're wasting your time." "You're wasting your money." "You're losing." "You hateful/sexist/racist BernieBros." Who on Earth would have a positive response to any of that shit? Attacking voters is a no-go.

The accusations that Sanders has been negative are hollow. In fact, just about every criticism against Sanders has been dishonest to some degree. From Capehart's ham-fisted swiftboating to "where was he on healthcare in 1994?" to our seagulls screaming about his speaking at the Vatican, all of it has made critics look like damn fools and by contrast made Sanders look even better to his supporters. So fresh negative attacks on Sanders now go nowhere fast.

If there's ever an election for a protest vote, this is it. Both parties are deeply fragmented, so no matter how this election turns out, nobody will have that much power. Odds are looking pretty good that we'll even witness the death of a political party. And Sanders is the strongest outside candidate in many years. Lots of voters will be giving a big fat middle finger to the two major parties, so the reasoning goes: "One more can't hurt." All the fuckyous in the world won't bring them back to you.

The only effective option for reducing BoBs (assuming you want to) is to honestly confront what they complain about and show them where the solutions to those problems fit into the party and the Clinton campaign. So far I haven't seen even an attempt.

Why will I vote for Hillary? I'm a pragmatist like Sanders. Fight and push like hell for the best possible option, and when the fighting and pushing is done, work with the best available option. Sanders is the best possible option for me. Hillary is currently a better fallback option than a protest vote, but lots of folks supposedly "with her" are working awfully hard to reverse that balance.

May 14, 2016

Why is concern over Clinton's wall street ties not a legitimate issue?

People around here are trying to frame it as some bogus right-wing smear that otherwise good liberals have been snookered into somehow.

To me it seems apparent that receiving campaign funding from wall street (when I say wall street, it's just a fill-in for the whole financial services industry) is a conflict, and a big one at that. On the one had, a politician has to go to a relatively small number of people who benefit profoundly from the current system and ask for support. On the other hand, we expect that politician to make changes that will damage those same people. How on Earth is that supposed to work?

It didn't work for Obama; he got a whole lot of financial help from wall street and his administration has had an utterly pitiful record of actually prosecuting bank personnel involved in the mortgage crisis. Holder did nothing while Lynch has only made promises and that policy is more of a promise to do better in the future than to revisit the past. So what's to make us believe that this time things will be different? Dodd-Frank exists, sure, but it depends rather heavily on actions by the executive branch, so that doesn't diffuse the conflict. The new executive could just continue to do a poor job of utilizing it.

Granted, the speech transcripts thing is a bit petty, but it grows legs because the payments for those speeches are so obviously disproportionate--that's what's really driving the anger. It looks awfully similar to corruption we've seen from others before.

Between the apparent conflict of interest and the appearance of corruption, is it completely unreasonable that some are worried? At the least, could anyone explain why this is all pretty reasonable behavior for a candidate without talking down to the rest of us?

May 10, 2016

I would be astounded if Bernie somehow got the nomination.

I would not be even a little surprised if Hillary lost the GE.

The negatives about her are certainly overhyped to a huge degree, but they still exist. I don't see her campaign doing ANYTHING to address those. If anything, they seem to be doing the opposite by attacking voters who mention them.

Staunch democrats and staunch republicans more or less cancel each other out. The people backing Trump are pissed off, nd pissed off people are good at self-motivation and will eagerly blind themselves to their own team's negatives. Meanwhile, Hillary and the DNC have been busily beating down the motivation of young voters: not real democrats, want unicorns, sexist, bad at math, etc. Disheartened voters tend to not vote. What is the expected outcome of such abuse?

Hillary needs to fix her message in a big hurry.

May 10, 2016

Kissinger, yea or nay?

I support Bernie on this. Kissinger's a war criminal.

May 10, 2016

Pyrrhic Victory -- Tantamount to Defeat

If we win by kowtowing to the people that corrupted the system in the first place, what do we win?

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/hilary-clinton-bush-donors-222872
http://www.salon.com/2016/05/09/hillary_clinton_is_wall_streets_preferred_candidate_financial_execs_pouring_millions_into_her_campaign_to_defeat_trum/

Sanders' campaign has proven that big donors can be gleefully ignored, so Hillary now has that option if she just chooses it. But she has chosen to stick with the corrupt system.

No, I don't hate Hillary. But she is clearly taking her campaign in the wrong direction. Hillary has pointed out that Obama took money from Wall Street but it didn't corrupt him. However, the stark lack of prosecutions for proven fraud speaks otherwise. Why is there an expectation that she will be immune?

May 9, 2016

Why are we supposed to care that some anonymous person behaved like an asshole?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511925223
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511918420
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511915985
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511921904

If all that's required to prove X is to mention (perhaps not even substantiate) that somebody somewhere sometime was an asshole, I can easily prove everything.

How are these stories we're being spammed with relevant?

The sudden swarm of attacks makes it seem like the Hillary people around here are a lot less certain about HRC's "inevitability" than they let on.

May 8, 2016

Rights of protesters, yea or nay?

Personally, I'd agree that Sanders' treatment of police violence and black issues in general was lacking before the infamous event where BLM protesters took the stage from him in Seattle. He responded by profoundly improving several parts of his platform. Several people on his staff now come from the BLM movement.

I think respecting protests, even when they're inconvenient and combative, and incorporating their message is a vital part of democracy. Just shutting them out and shouting them down is weakness.

May 6, 2016

If Bernie isn't a "real" democrat

then it's because democrats haven't got their shit together. He's been working for what they claim to believe in across his entire career--even when they opposed him.

The party platform: https://www.democrats.org/party-platform

Sanders' platform: https://berniesanders.com/issues/

Right on civil rights before it was popular: http://www.salon.com/2015/07/22/20_examples_of_bernie_sanders_powerful_record_on_civil_and_human_rights_partner/

Right on gay rights before it was popular: http://www.queerty.com/5-times-bernie-sanders-was-championed-our-cause-before-it-was-popular-20160131

Right on opposing the war before it was popular:

Right on TPP before it was popular:

Right on Keystone before it was popular: http://www.politicususa.com/2014/11/07/bernie-sanders-shatters-big-keystone-xl-lie-pipeline-oil-prices.html

Right on Panama before it was popular: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-panama-papers_us_5703c2d4e4b083f5c608d386

Right on drug price gouging before it was popular: http://www.albionmonitor.com/0007a/berniedrugs.html

Right on unions before it was popular: http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/11/15/a-socialist-in-the-senate/

Right on the minimum wage, healthcare, immigration, food stamps, highways, etc.

And on and on and on.

Not to mention successfully financing a national campaign without large donors or exclusive fund raisers--showing all of us that we are needed and they are not.

Decades of video: http://www.c-span.org/search/?searchtype=People&query=bernie+sanders

Decades of public records: http://www.ontheissues.org/Bernie_Sanders.htm

If democrats aren't that, they should be.

May 5, 2016

Who around here is worried about exit poll discrepancies and generally bad polling this election?

There will be more elections beyond this primary. Will you have confidence in them? What should change?