Debbie Wasserman Schultz Out As DNC Chair After Leaked Emails Lead To DNC Chaos
Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is out as head of the Democratic National Committee after the release of a trove of embarrassing emails.
After a treasure trove of leaked emails showed that Democratic National Committee members were supporting Hillary Clinton’s campaign behind the scenes and openly mocking the campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, D.N.C. Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced that she would drastically limit her role at this week’s convention and resign her position effective with the end of the convention on Thursday night:
PHILADELPHIA — Democrats arrived at their nominating convention on Sunday under a cloud of discord as Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, abruptly said she was resigning after a trove of leaked emails showed party officials conspiring to sabotage the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
The revelation, along with sizable pro-Sanders protests here in the streets to greet arriving delegates, threatened to undermine the delicate healing process that followed the contentious fight between Mr. Sanders and Hillary Clinton. And it raised the prospect that a convention that was intended to showcase the Democratic Party’s optimism and unity, in contrast to the Republicans, could be marred by dissension and disorder.
The day also veered extraordinarily into allegations, not easily dismissed, that Russia had a hand in the leaks that helped bring down the head of an American political party.
Despite those concerns, Democrats are hoping that focusing on Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee, will galvanize the party to rally around Mrs. Clinton, and on Sunday those efforts received a major boost when Michael R. Bloomberg, the former Republican and independent mayor of New York, said he would endorse her.
In her resignation statement, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, a representative from Florida, said she would continue to fight for Mrs. Clinton from the sidelines.
“I know that electing Hillary Clinton as our next president is critical for America’s future,” Ms. Wasserman Schultz said in a statement. “I look forward to serving as a surrogate for her campaign in Florida and across the country to ensure her victory.”
She added, “Going forward, the best way for me to accomplish those goals is to step down as party chair at the end of this convention.”
Donna Brazile, a vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, will be the interim chairwoman through the election, the committee said.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz has faced a flurry of negative stories during her five-year tenure as the committee’s chairwoman, with critics charging that she was more focused on promoting her career than on the party, but she had resisted calls to quit.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz announced her resignation after a private meeting with advisers and senior aides to Mrs. Clinton at a hotel here a day before the party’s convention was set to begin. She had faced growing calls for her resignation over the weekend.
“In politics, you need to not only know when to draw your sword, but also when to fall on it,” said James Carville, a longtime friend and adviser to the Clintons.
The breach of the Democratic committee’s emails, made public on Friday by WikiLeaks, offered undeniable evidence of what Mr. Sanders’s supporters had complained about for much of the senator’s contentious primary contest with Mrs. Clinton: that the party was effectively an arm of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. The messages showed members of the committee’s communications team musing about pushing the narrative that the Sanders campaign was inept and trying to raise questions publicly about whether he was an atheist.
Mr. Sanders said the situation was an “outrage” on Sunday before the resignation was announced, and called for Ms. Wasserman Schultz to step down. Afterward, he said it was the right decision.
“The party leadership must also always remain impartial in the presidential nominating process, something which did not occur in the 2016 race,” he said in a statement.
The charge that the DNC has been biased in favor of the Clinton campaign is not a new one, of course, but was part of a constant theme on Sanders’ part throughout his campaign. Among Sanders complaints was the fact that the committee seemed to be limiting the number of candidate debates, and scheduling them at times when they would seem designed to get the lowest possible viewership, in order to both protect Clinton and to prevent an opponent, whether it be Sanders or anyone else from having the opportunity to take Clinton on in a free-media setting before a national audience, There were also complaints that the committee was restricting the Sanders campaign’s access to shared voter data in order to make its campaign more difficult. That particular issue took national prominence when the Sanders campaign was cut off from using an important shared DNC database for nearly a week after it allegedly breached firewalls between the campaigns that didn’t seem to be designed very well to begin with. For many Sanders supporters, though, the final straw was the fact that Wasserman-Schultz, who has been a long time Clinton supporter, maintained her role as the head of the committee notwithstanding the fact that there were suspicions that she was supporting Clinton all along. Ideally, she should have stepped aside once it was clear that Clinton was going to have a contest, but the fact that she didn’t, and the fact that the DNC appeared to be plainly acting in a manner meant to favor Clinton only increased the resentment against her.
The problems for the DNC only became worse when the emails were released:
Top officials at the Democratic National Committee criticized and mocked Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont during the primary campaign, even though the organization publicly insisted that it was neutral in the race, according to committee emails made public on Friday by WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks posted almost 20,000 emails sent or received by a handful of top committee officials and provided an online tool to search through them. While WikiLeaks did not reveal the source of the leak, the committee said last month that Russian hackers had penetrated its computer system.
Among the emails released on Friday were several embarrassing messages that suggest the committee’s chairwoman, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, and other officials favored Hillary Clinton over Mr. Sanders — a claim the senator made repeatedly during the primaries.
In one of the emails, dated May 21, Mark Paustenbach, a committee communications official, wrote to a colleague about the possibility of urging reporters to write that Mr. Sanders’s campaign was “a mess” after a glitch on the committee’s servers gave it access to Clinton voter data.
“Wondering if there’s a good Bernie narrative for a story, which is that Bernie never ever had his act together, that his campaign was a mess,” Mr. Paustenbach wrote to Luis Miranda, the communications director for the committee.
In another email exchange, Mr. Miranda asked Ms. Wasserman Schultz whether they should call CNN to complain about a segment the network aired in which Mr. Sanders said he would oust the chairwoman if he were elected.
“Do you all think it’s worth highlighting for CNN that her term ends the day after the inauguration, when a new D.N.C. Chair is elected anyway?” Mr. Miranda asked. Ms. Wasserman Schultz responded by dismissing the senator’s chances. “This is a silly story,” she wrote. “He isn’t going to be president.”
The emails appear to bolster Mr. Sanders’s claims that the committee, and in particular Ms. Wasserman Schultz, did not treat him fairly. His campaign accused the committee of scheduling debates on weekends so fewer people would see them. And in May, Jeff Weaver, Mr. Sanders’s campaign manager, said on CNN that “we could have a long conversation just about Debbie Wasserman Schultz and how she’s been throwing shade at the Sanders campaign since the very beginning.”
In an email exchange that month, another committee official wrote to both Mr. Paustenbach and Amy Dacey, the committee’s chief executive, to suggest finding a way to bring attention to the religious beliefs of an unnamed person, apparently Mr. Sanders.
“It might may no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief. Does he believe in a God,” wrote Brad Marshall, the chief financial officer of the committee. “He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps.”
Mr. Marshall added in a second email: “It’s these Jesus thing.” Ms. Dacey wrote back, in capital letters: “AMEN.”
Mr. Marshall did not respond on Friday to an email asking for comment. But The Intercept, a news website, quoted Mr. Marshall as saying: “I do not recall this. I can say it would not have been Sanders. It would probably be about a surrogate.”
On top of all of the allegations made during the course of the primary campaign, these emails were effectively the last straw, and it’s not surprising that Wasserman-Schultz announced her resignation so quickly yesterday. No doubt, both President Clinton and the Clinton campaign were pressuring her to move aside prior to the start of the convention and likely would have used their combined influence inside the DNC to force her out if she had not acted on her own. As it stands, though, I suspect it’s going to take a little more to satisfy Sanders and his supporters that she has been punished sufficiently for what they plainly see as rigging the process in favor of her preferred candidate. Right now, for example, Wasserman-Schultz is scheduled to speak at the beginning and end of the conventions this week but, based on her reception at a breakfast meeting of her home state’s Democratic delegation, which didn’t exactly go as planned, one suspects that those plans will be abandoned so that the convention doesn’t begin on such as negative note as the Chairwoman of the DNC getting booed from the floor of the convention. In the end, though, Wasserman-Schultz has nobody but herself to blame for this. The extent to which she put her thumb on the scale for Hillary Clinton was laughably apparent, and the fact that she and others in the DNC got away with it for so long is only going to reinforce the arguments that people like Sanders, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and, yes even Donald Trump, have been making for the better part of a year about the system being rigged.
I doubt that this story is going to matter very much to the outcome of the election. Most people have no idea who Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is, and many of the likely don’t care. It is nonetheless important for the Clinton campaign to get this story behind them as soon as possible, both to limit the negative news coverage going forward and to push back against the idea of a lack of unity heading into November. In the end, though, I tend to think this story will matter as little in November as Ted Cruz’s convention speech will. For most voters, issues such as the economy and national security are going to matter far more than the actions of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.
Count me among those who barely knew who she was. Now I know. She’s an idiot.
Doug:
Did they actually sabotage or attempt to sabotage ?
Otherwise it looks like “water-cooler” gossip among some staff that were otherwise supporting Clinton.
I’d liken it to people who work at the National Football League. We expect the NFL to be impartial, but you can’t expect staff members to not have a favorite team. Where trouble occurs is when those staff actually do something to influence a game.
I don’t see that case having been made yet regarding the DNC.
On 9/10/15, DWS said “we’re going to have six debates.” Sanders and lot of other people protested that decision. Number of debates that took place last time (2007-2008): 26.
Whatever. I never really understood the EVIL DWS stuff the Sanders people were ranting about.
Wow, the DNC wanted a lifelong democrat they worked with for decades over an independent who became a democrat last year? Guess what? The DNC and super delegates were backing Hillary in 2008, but it didn’t matter because Obama won more delegates and primaries.
If her stepping down shuts up the whining from the BernieBros for a few minutes then it’s totally worth it.
@Bob@Youngstown: You nailed it. Nothing material and new in emails.
Doug – any reason you didn’t include the identity of the hackers who provided the emails to Assange?
I would think a foreign government trying to meddle in the US election is a more important aspect than political insiders talking insider baseball…
@jukeboxgrad:
Zero question DNC had its thumb on scales re debates but that wasn’t in emails. That is what we already knew (and it isn’t really surprising that they preferred a life-long Democrat against someone who only joined the party to run for POTUS).
DWS has been on the way out for 6 mos. This is Nothing Tacos with Donkey Sauce.
The worst thing about DWS is not that she was biased but that she is incompetent. It was stupid to get a sitting Congressman to do double duty. Should have got someone full time.
The best thing to do is drag Howard Dean back and have him fix this mess.
538 says 46% chance Trump wins as of right now.
If that happens, I hope every republican idiot in america gets hit in the face by a Leonid Meteor in the early morning 10 days after the election.
Punish is quite the apropos word. The still-raging BernieBro segment of Sanders supporters are utterly furious and want someone to go down for what their failure to get the public to Feel the Bern. Even if Wasserman Schultz had utterly and blatantly favored Clinton, the public still said no to Bernie. Party favoritism doesn’t always help; ask Jebb how he’s liking his nominee status. Add in a lot of their complaints are self-inflicted (the delegate mess in Nevada stemmed from a lack of filling out registration forms for god’s sake), the favoritism didn’t do nearly as much damage as they claim. They were ALWAYS the underdog and were quite proud of it. Fun fact about underdogs: movies lie and they don’t always win. They rarely do – that’s why they are underdogs, not the frontrunners.
This is revenge for losing. The ones that know not voting Dem this year is condemning us all to Trump Hell need a target for their frustration and picked Wasserman Schultz. Maybe she did lean Clinton and was not as impartial as idealism dictates but it wasn’t going to give Bernie the nomination. It’s petty politics at its best.
@SKI:
Some folks are astonished and shocked that the Democrats would want a Democrat to represent the Democrats in a presidential election.
@KM:
Don’t confuse on-line noise with reality. ~90% of Bernie supporters prefer Clinton to Trump.
@steve s:
Xoxoxoxoxo
I find it somewhat difficult to get too exercised. DWS organizing for the Democrat, not the life-long Independent/socialist? Organizing for the one who could win, not a circus act closer to Larry David than some might like to admit. Heavens to Mergatroyd.
Seems to me the bigger issue is that if the DNC could be hacked by, say, the Russians. So could Hillary. Now what? Boris Badinov has her secret yoga poses and Chelseas wedding plans.
@KM:
The thing is that there are always going to be some voters who cross party lines, for whatever reason.
In recent presidential elections, roughly one out of ten Democrats voted for the Republican candidate. And then there is the segment of independents whose views don’t align along typical right-left lines, who make choices that may appear to be inconsistent and erratic when compared with more partisan voters. I wouldn’t expect it to be any different this time.
Facebones:
If you say you are neutral even though you are not neutral, then you are lying. And all this is self-destructive, because it feeds into Trump’s narrative, that the system is rigged and that Clinton is a key beneficiary of that rigged system.
You should consider the possibility that he won more delegates and primaries because he had 26 debates to introduce himself to the public. At the beginning of the process hardly anyone knew who he was. 26 debates changed that.
SKI:
You mean we already knew DNC was lying when they claimed neutrality? I don’t recall you (or any other Clintonists here) ever admitting that.
What is in the emails is proof of bias, which means that the claims of neutrality were false. The emails matter because they are strong proof that those claims were false.
If you say you are neutral even though you are not neutral, then you are lying.
KM:
And the fact that “DNC had its thumb on scales” had nothing to do with the result? 26 debates in 2007-2008 did not help the unknown Obama become known? DWS wanted to prevent such a thing from happening again, and she succeeded.
Let’s see: Hillary Clinton got 16M votes, Bernie Sanders got 12M votes, so how exactly did Wasserman-Schultz rig the various state primaries so that Bernie got 4 million less votes than Hillary Clinton did?
Do the emails provide any clarification on this?
@al-Alameda:
Some folks have convinced themselves that being behind by 14% makes somebody a winner. Must be the new math.
The correct numbers are 16.8 and 13.2.
She didn’t rig the primaries. She rigged the debates. If you think the debates don’t matter, look at Sanders’ numbers before and after.
Yes, the emails confirm that the claims of neutrality were lies, which helps us understand that the debates were rigged, which in turn helps us understand the final result.
Some folks have convinced themselves that having 6 debates instead of 26 had no effect on Sanders’ ability to overcome the fact that he started as an unknown. Like Obama, who changed that via 26 debates.
By the way, the correct number is 12.1, not 14.
@jukeboxgrad:
Name calling? Really?
I don’t recall stating that in the past but I certainly never said the DNC were neutral. THey weren’t. They never are.
They also have minimal impact on the actual election, see, e.g., 2008, if the population actually wants a different candidate.
Those claims don’t mean anything. If you define neutral to mean they didn’t have a preference, no one believed that they didn’t. They, along with most of the Democratic elected officials, super delegates and active Democratic party participants, preferred HRC.
So did Obama for that matter. He definitely wanted HRC over Sanders because he thought that she was better qualified and more likely to win and carry on his legacy. But he didn’t endorse and become a overt partisan – and neither did the DNC. And if you use that definition of neutral, not openly advocating for the opponent, they were neutral.
Regardless, it didn’t matter. There is no plausible circumstance that Bernie wins if only the DNC had been more “truly neutral”.
Everyone complained about the endless number of debates in 2008. They had agreed, years ago, to sharply limit it this time – regardless of who would have run. If Biden gets in the race, the “Establishment support” is split but the debate schedule isn’t likely to be materially different. Bernie didn’t lose because of a massive conspiracy. He lost because he didn’t appeal as much to large aspects of the Democratic base and didn’t get the votes that she did.
We have credible evidence that the Republican candidate for President is receiving material support from a foreign nation, a foreign nation that is hostile to the United States.
– James Joyner’s (Political Scientist and Defense expert) only post of the day is on Trumps post convention bump.
– Doug Mataconis’ (Lawyer and Political blogger) only post of the day is on Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s cat-fight with Bernie Sanders.
My god the Russians are actively helping one of the only two people who can be President of the United States and the Republicans just don’t care.
Trump & Putin. Yes, It’s Really a Thing
How Putin Weaponized Wikileaks to Influence the Election of an American President
2016 Republican party slogan: Party before Country
@SKI: The real question is will they vote at all? Or are they even registered to vote? GOTV campaign will be very important this go around. Especially among the Sanders supporters.
@Scott: On the other hand, the best GOTV campaign is enthusiasm. That needs some work, also.
@Scott: Well, given they voted for him in the primaries, yes, they are registered to vote.
That said, absolutely, GOTV efforts are always where the rubber hits the road.
Wow, I wonder what a REAL treasure trove would seem like.
Lying should be described as such, even (or especially) when my side is doing it.
The problem is not just having a preference. It’s acting on it.
You said this:
That is you admitting they were not neutral. The word means ‘not helping or supporting either side.’ I’m pretty sure “thumb on scales” is a form of ‘helping.’
Are Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin Really BFFs?
The Republicans and the beltway media have sold our country to the Russians for a lower marginal tax rate.
—–
@jukeboxgrad:
Are you calling me a liar? Go to hell.
No, I’m not. I’m calling DWS a liar.
If it was a sincere question, then maybe next time you’ll wait for my answer.
@jukeboxgrad:
1. You made a comment calling me a Clintonista and that I had claimed the DNC were neutral in the past.
2. I called you out on name-calling and denied the accusation that I had made such a claim.
3. You replied that you saw the need to call out liars.
It seems pretty straightforward to me.
@jukeboxgrad:
My totals were rounded from Real Clear Politics:
Clinton 15,805,136
Sanders 12,029,699
and Clinton +3,775,437
No intention to deceive on my part.
Sanders was consistently behind during the primary season. There was no evidence of any kind of a bounce during that period; he was always well behind by double digits.
The number of viewers was downtrending as time went on. More debates weren’t going to help Sanders; most people were not going to watch them. Democrats preferred Clinton, and some folks need to get over it.
Nancy Pelosi got booed by Sanders supporters this morning at the California delegates’ breakfast.
SKI:
I described you as a Clintonist. I don’t think that’s an insult. Was my statement incorrect?
What I actually said was this:
Which is a way of asking this question: is this the first time you (or any other Clintonists here) are admitting that the DNC claim of neutrality was a lie? It’s a legitimate question, and I’m still interested in the answer. I never said you “had claimed the DNC were neutral in the past.”
al-Alameda:
They usually have good numbers, but not always.
I’m sure that’s true, and I never said or implied otherwise.
Pch101:
Maybe someone can help me understand the relationship between that assertion and this one:
I realize they were said by two different people. I’m just wondering if there is a way for them both to make sense.
13,100,987 does not round to 13.2 million.
Number of votes for Sanders: 13,168,214. I already provided the link.
I can’t find the part of your comment where you apologize for falsely claiming 14%.
This is probably the least significant of the information from the leaks. Other details unearthed so far:
— The Clintons were lining up big donors to be rewarded with plum appointments
— The National Finance Chairman sent an email to another guy that read “I love you too. No homo.”
And the charge that the Russians are intervening in our election to help Trump is a bit of a reach. Yes, they are meddling (much like Obama did with Israel’s elections), but he isn’t directly helping Trump. He’s hurting the Democrats, It’s just as bad, but you can’t lay this one on Trump.
It’s also a warning shot at Hillary. If Russia got its hands on the DNC emails, only an idiot would believe they don’t have Hillary’s server’s files, too.
I don’t recall saying that. Am I now responsible for statements made by other people?
I’m just looking at the data. Facts:
-Sanders was consistently behind by double-digits during the primary season. Where I come from, they call that a “landslide”
-Debate viewership was declining. That would suggest that many Americans had seen enough or weren’t interested enough to start.
Unlike some of you, I’m not outraged that Democrats would want a Democrat to represent them in an election.
I have never belonged to any political party, and I have no expectations that a party should kowtow to me when I don’t belong to it, have never belonged to it, and probably will never belong to it. To think otherwise is frankly delusional; if you care about how the Democrats choose their candidates, then sign up and be a Democrat. Otherwise, stop whining about it, because it isn’t your problem.
So Sanders was sabotaged by only having 9 debates and 13 forums, most of which occurred after the race was down to just two candidates. The tinfoil is strong with this crowd.
This link was provided: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries,_2016
It offers this figure as a total for Sanders: 13,100,987
I used RCP, which had votes 15.8 million for Clinton vs 12.0 million for Sanders. Ignoring votes that were cast for candidates other than Sanders, you end up with 43% for Sanders. Spread between 57% and 43%: 14%.
If you apply the same approach to Wikipedia’s figures, then you get 16.8 million for Clinton vs 13.1 million for Sanders. Ignoring votes that were cast for candidates other than Sanders, you end up with 44% for Sanders. Spread between 56% and 44%: 12%.
If you were hoping to prove that Sanders didn’t get clobbered, then you failed. If you were hoping to prove that there is a considerable difference between these two results, then you also failed. If you’re still hungry, you’ll find the sour grapes over on the Bernie Bros buffet table.
@Loviatar:
Well, Trump has a penis. Granted, it’s small, but it’s trustworthy and loyal to white nationalism.
That’s good enough for James and Doug.
@Jenos Idanian:
Comey, and the FBI are idiots (per Jenos).
Got it.
@Bob@Youngstown: Did Comey say definitively that the Russians don’t?
Comey spelled out exactly what Hillary did, and it fit the letter of the law for illegal. He had to introduce the whole “malicious intent” thingie out of whole cloth to exonerate her.
Anyone willing to bet that the Russians do NOT have Hillary’s emails are free to express their belief this November.
Pch101:
You seem to have missed the part of my comment where I said this: “I realize they were said by two different people.”
Except the data you prefer to ignore. I showed that Sanders’ favorability improved greatly, comparing pre-debates and post-debates. You have not addressed this.
The outrage is not that DWS preferred Clinton. The outrage is that DWS lied. This needs to be seen in the broader context of Clinton’s severe honesty problem:
DWS’s fake neutrality is a self-inflicted wound, and it gives Trump a platform to use words like “rigged” and “crooked.” There are many similar examples of self-inflicted wounds in Clinton’s record.
At the top of the page the number is 13,168,214, with a footnote showing that this is the correct number.
And in this instance RCP is wrong.
David M:
Correct. 9 is much less than 26. 26 debates is how the unknown Obama became known. DWS knew what she was doing. She learned from history.
Bob@Youngstown:
What did Comey say to support the idea that no one hacked the Clinton server?
And yet you tried to put that on me, anyway. A bad idea, irrespective of how or how many times that you attempt to rationalize it.
The fact remains that your guy was soundly defeated. As I have suggested to Republicans who were bitter about 2012, the solution to your election blues is to find someone who can win more votes than the other guy (or gal.)
Good thing I didn’t do that. All I did is ask a fair question. Still waiting for an answer.
Some folks have convinced themselves that DNC rigging the debates had no effect on the result. I supposed they have also convinced themselves that news of this rigging will have no effect in November.
Nice talkin’ to you. I’ll see you around at the next 9/11 Truther meeting!
Wasn’t it just a few short days ago that this comments section was cluck-clucking away about Trumps competence for convention miscues? Judgments of this kind are strangely absent from the discussion today. Damnedest thing.
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/07/25/bernie-delegates-planning-to-give-wasserman-schultz-the-cruz-treatment/
By the way, does anyone know if DWS, after being roundly booed off the stage, met with Boris Badinov for a cheesesteak to discuss the finer points of cyber security ?
@SKI:
One would, wouldn’t one. But the supposedly liberal MSM never gave a damn about the ties between Saudi Arabia and Bushco. Why? IOKIYAR.
I accept your surrender.
This fallacy is called appeal to ridicule.
Some people only deserve ridicule.
Your guy was soundly defeated and no amount of data and trend analysis will convince you that you simply bet on a less popular horse. This is a psychological issue, not a political one, and while I wish you no ill, I’m also not your therapist.
@jukeboxgrad / other Sandernistas,
Here are your choices on Nov. 8, 2016
– Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump
Any choice other than Hillary can credibly be considered a vote for Donald Trump. Like it, Love it, Hate it, doesn’t matter these are your choices.
– Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump
Russia, a nation that is hostile to our interests is trying to buy the American presidency, don’t be like the Republican party, don’t put your own selfish needs above those of the country.
– Trump & Putin. Yes, It’s Really a Thing
– How Putin Weaponized Wikileaks to Influence the Election of an American President
2016 Republican party slogan: Party before Country
@gVOR08:
Sorry but the ties the Bush family had with the Royal House of Saud weren’t anywhere near this problematic for at least two reasons:
1. The Saudis didn’t try to interfere with US elections in favor of the Bushes.
2. The Bushes didn’t owe hundreds of millions of dollars to the Saudis.
On the second point, we’ve known for more than a decade that Trump couldn’t get bank financing from any bank other than DeutschBank due to his behavior and bankruptcies. In 2008, Donald Jr. spoke about how the Russians were major funders of the Trump Organization
Add in that Trump’s debt has dramatically increased in the past year. He went from $350 Million in debt in 2015 to $630 Million in debt in 2016.
There is a reason Trump isn’t releasing his tax returns – and it isn’t because they are being audited. Maybe this isn’t it but we won’t know until he does.
Resorting to personal attacks is what people do when they run out of facts.
I knew you weren’t really done even though you said you were done (“Nice talkin’ to you”).
It’s worth noting that juvenile antics like this whining from our current bernie bro troll are helping Trump. Seems like an odd choice to be making, unless one has clearly lost control of their CDS.
@jukeboxgrad:
Playing dumb isn’t a good look.
It isn’t complicated.
Yes, the DNC scheduled the debates on Saturday nights to help HRC.
Whatever help it gave, wasn’t material given the dramatic difference in the candidates’ performances – especially as the viewing audience’s for primary debates is (a) tiny and (b) far more influenced by not the debates themselves but the media take, the spin and soundbites.
Put bluntly, they wanted HRC to win and took some small action to “lean” on the scales with respect to debate scheduling but their actions didn’t cause Bernie to lose.
But you knew that…
What is the basis of any claim of misconduct by DWS?
Some emails.
Who sent those emails?
Employees of the DNC.
What were those emails about.
People saying, and talking about doing, bad things pertaining to the Sanders campaign.
Did anyone act pursuant to those emails
Nope.
What effect did those emails have on the Sanders campaign
None.
What is the point of contention about those emails?
That they show bias.
What was the supposedly biased action taken by the DNC re the Sanders campaign?
That the DNC scheduled too few debates.
When was the scheduling of the debates initially announced?
August 2015
When were the emails sent?
May 2016
Was there any such clear evidence of bias prior to May 2016?
Nope
When the Sanders campaign complained about the number of debates, did the DNC agree to more debates?
Yep.
How many debates were finally held?
Nine, plus 13 “town halls”.
Is there some legal requirement that any primary debates be held at all?
Nope.
Did I miss anything?
@Bob@Youngstown:
The DNC emails reveal that it was instrumental in circulating a Jon Ralston article about the Nevada convention that asserted — without proof, as a comparison between his article and the NY Times article published a day before will show — Sanders supporters at the convention were unruly and violent because of Sanders’s behavior, adding fuel to the left-punching BernieBro meme of misogyny and tantrum-throwing. I believe Josh Marshall had several blog posts citing this article as evidence that “it goes all the way to the top.” It was cited on this blog in the comments some months back when a concerned person wanted to express their newfound disregard for Sanders due to this inciting behavior that didn’t exist outside of Ralston’s imagination.
“That’s just normal political ratfwcking,” you say. Sure, if the Clinton campaign did it. They didn’t; the DNC did. The DNC acting as an arm of the Clinton campaign is problematic.
Like a punching bag.
@Tillman:
There’s nothing wrong with ratfwcking the candidate who had already lost the primary.
Some people can’t handle the truth.
Sanders was consistently behind during the primaries by double digits. If you want to look at numbers, then go look at those.
Viewership for the debates was downtrending. See, more numbers.
Unless you had a plan for combining the Democratic debates with Dancing with the Stars, American Idol or NCIS, I’m thinking that the trend was pretty well in. Debates are just not that exciting, and people have stuff to do (such as watching other TV shows.)
The funny thing is that you were supposedly schooling me that Sanders’ socialism wasn’t a problem because everyone already knew that he was a socialist. Yet now I’m being told that nobody had a chance to know who Sanders was because of these allegedly rigged debates that were on TV, YouTube, and elsewhere. (When I type [clinton sanders debate] into YouTube, I get 2.8 million hits; perhaps the DNC has blocked this in your area.) Excuse for laughing at the obvious inconsistency of these two “arguments”; I just can’t take you seriously.
@Jenos Idanian:
Do you want to revisit that? If you just admit they are intervening to hurt HRC (which in a binary election like ours necessarily helps Trump), how is it “a bit of a reach”?
And how are you so sanguine about reality that Trump is being actively backed by Putin?
Oh, and it is nothing like what Obama did (or what Bibi did previously in 2012). Obama made his preference quietly known but didn’t hack Likud or use governmental assets to interfere.
@jukeboxgrad :
Are you seriously claiming Bernie lost because he wasn’t “well-known”? We knew more about his policies and standpoints from Day 1 then the majority of Republicans combined when they quit! Sanders did a remarkable job getting his message out, making himself a meme and creating a cult of personality. His major platforms were common knowledge thanks to the press and he never lacked for screen-time considering his underdog status. Another few debates would not have helped because, much like Trump, you already knew if you were for or against him. It’s Hillary people are having the “ummmmmmmm, well…” moment choosing.
He did well and should be proud that he was able to get as many votes as he did. He definitely struck a chord with many. However, it wasn’t enough to win and pointless what-ifs will not change that. It’s really starting to sound like bitter grapes.
@ jukebox:
Boy, you sure are cranky today.
I believe during questioning by the House Committee, Comey stated that there was no evidence that the Clinton server was accessed by a foreign entity. He also stated that the hacker Lucifer admitted that he had contrived the story that he had hacked.
Now what Jenos said was ” only an idiot would believe they (referring specifically to Russia) don’t have Hillary’s server’s files, too.
Without any evidence, why should Comey and his investigators “believe” that a foreign entity (Russia) had accessed the server?But all this is just smoke-screen to avoid facing the absence of evidence that the DNC, as an organization, attempted to sabotage Sanders
As it relates to the lying charge, HORRORS ! A politician lied ? Oh, say it isn’t so!
David M:
Resorting to personal attacks is what people do when they run out of facts.
Feel free to present any logic or facts to support your apparent view that DWS did not limit the number of debates for the purpose of helping Clinton. Likewise for your apparent view that this action did not actually have the effect of helping Clinton.
You’re entitled to your opinion. In my opinion, what helps Trump is people who make excuses for corruption in my party.
SKI:
A good example of claiming to know something that you don’t actually know.
stonetools:
Someone said this:
Are you saying that assertion is wrong? Just curious.
Pch101:
Still not done, even though you said you were done? Fine with me.
Correct. ‘Socialist’ is one of the first things any article would say about him, so most people knew that fact, but they didn’t know much else. Debates is how they got to know the person connected to that fact, and they liked that person, which is why his favorability rating went up as people got to know him. And DWS anticipated this, which is why she called for 6 debates instead of 26. Not complicated.
KM:
Are you seriously claiming that limiting the number of debates did not help Clinton? We don’t know if Sanders would have won, but we do know that the DNC was working against him, and lying about it. This is a problem, and glossing over it is the kind of thing I expect the other party to do, not mine.
@David M: So as long as the basketball game is pretty much over even though there’s time on the clock, it’s okay if the winners start punching the losers?
There’s literally no point in ratfwcking a candidate that’s already lost. You can’t gain anything from it and you lose their supporters. And again, this the DNC we’re talking about, not the Clinton campaign. The analogy above isn’t even correct: it’s like if the refs decide to punch the losing team.
Bob@Youngstown:
Yes, he said this:
And then his next sentence was this:
Which means he is not saying she wasn’t hacked, which is what you implied he said.
Someone said this:
Are you saying that assertion is wrong? Just curious.
I don’t ignore it when the other side does it, and I can’t think of any reason to ignore it when my side does it.
@Bob@Youngstown: No but you are – Comey acknowledged that there was evidence that the incompetent POS – oops I mean SOS eMails were hacked
I saw lots of Middle Class Brazilians on the internet praising Sanders. He has some appeal. His problem is that he did not had much appeal with many Primary Voters in the United States – he was trounced with Non-White voters.
If these emails were from last November they would be problematic. They are from May, everyone knew that at time that Sanders had lost. And yes, when there is a clear winner in the Primary Race the Establishment of either party wants the contest to end as soon as possible so they can concentrate their efforts in the General Election.
Very few people noted, but when Biden said that the Obama was clean and articulate he was making a zinger against Jesse Jackson – many Democrats thought that by prolonging the 1988 Primary Jesse Jackson helped Dukakis to be defeated in the fall.
@SKI:
Would you like to revise that statement?
Obama admin. sent taxpayer money to campaign to oust Netanyahu
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/12/obama-admin-sent-taxpayer-money-oust-netanyahu/
DWS decision to limit the number of debates was a dumb idea. Hillary would have benefited from them, specially because Jim Webb and Martin O´Malley could be valuable sparring partners. But Sanders did not lost because of that. He lost because he did not care for issues affecting Hispanic and Black Voters – that segment on Lou Dobbs did not help.
@Tillman:
Look at it in a slightly different context. Two teammates are are racing two win a motorcycle race. The factory may have a preferred outcome, but that preference is nothing compared to their desire that the racer in second not torpedo the leader and take them both out of the race. Since it was obvious that Clinton had won, and it looked like Sanders was starting to move towards sabotaging the general election for the Democratic Nominee, why shouldn’t the DNC have acted?
@Jack:You really need more reliable, less partisan sources
OneVoice NGO did not use US funds in bid to topple Netanyahu, Senate inquiry finds:
Politifact: “mostly false.”
Because they said they are neutral, and lying is wrong. And if you prefer a more pragmatic perspective: lying is not just wrong but also stupid, when you are likely to get caught and when you have a candidate who already has (deservedly or not) a big honesty problem.
I don’t recall the DNC claiming to be neutral after the primary was over.
Tillman was discussing events that happened in May. The primary was over then? Those are the events you were defending.
The race isn’t over until a candidate is nominated at the convention, and the DNC needs to be neutral until that moment. That is, unless you want to hand Trump a gift by making it that much easier for him to use words like “rigged” and “corrupt.” Speaking of “helping Trump.”
@jukeboxgrad:
Then why are we not hearing from O’Malley and the other runners? Remember them – they would have gotten even more screwed by fewer debates then Sanders since virtually no one can name them! Most people knew there were 5+ Republican candidates but hardly any know it wasn’t just Clinton and Sanders. You don’t think more exposure would have kept them in the race longer? Where’s the conspiracy theory against them or do they not matter?
Clinton is the party favorite, no denying that. The lying is inexcusable as well; I must agree I do not like my party acting like those they would condemn. Here’s the thing though: you can take out the (current) party favorite as we’ve seen done repeatedly this year. We’ve also seen that more debates =/= better exposure since many Republicans flamed out specifically due to debate showings. Be upset about the lying as that’s a legit gripe but Sanders not being “well-known” enough after 6 debates is insulting to the other candidates people forget exist.
jukeboxgrad,
PolitiFact Is Guilty of Fact Abuse
http://www.newsmax.com/Reagan/PolitiFact-Fact-Checkers-Bias/2015/03/20/id/631565/
“It seems these “Fact Checkers” have their thumb on the scale of truth and actively tilt the discussion toward the left by disparaging conservative issues and elected officials.”
Sounds a lot like DWS.
Yes, the primary was over in mid May. The only group that didn’t know where the delusional Sanders supporters, which is why the DNC acting was a good thing. The less Sanders and his surrogates misled the voters, the better.
I realize most Democrats have the memory of a housefly, but come on. The primaries just wrapped up last month! Hillary Clinton did not blow out Bernie Sanders. It wasn’t “over” months ago. A big victory in CA (June 7) and Bernie Sanders would have had more pledged delegates (that would have been interesting.) Unlikely, but demonstrates how close the Dem primary actually was. Bernie Sanders did better against Clinton than Clinton did against Obama. When Sanders announced his candidacy, he polled at 3%. At that time, Clinton was polling in the high 60’s. That the DNC had to tip the scales in Clinton’s favor is absolutely amazing.
KM:
The question is irrelevant, and also a matter of guesswork, but here’s one answer: because they never attracted serious support. Sanders did.
We’re not talking about those Rs, we’re talking about Sanders. The facts regarding Sanders show that his support grew as people learned more about him. I presented the data for this many comments ago, and no one wants to address that. So in his case, more debates would have helped, which is why DWS did what she did.
David M:
If that was the position of the DNC, they should have cancelled the subsequent primaries. If they don’t, they are obliged to be neutral. They weren’t.
You are defending corruption, and you apparently can’t even see how you are helping Trump by doing so.
Expecting adults to pretend the primary wasn’t actually over to protect the precious fee-fees of the Sanders voters is ridiculous.
You’re claiming the primary was “actually over” in May. Trouble is, the DNC continued to run primary elections after that time. Which means it was the DNC that was pretending “the primary wasn’t actually over.”
Except that it’s not about protecting “the precious fee-fees of the Sanders voters.” It’s about protecting something else: the integrity of the party. People like you are one of the reasons it doesn’t have much.
Not liking the facts doesn’t change the facts, which is something the Sanders supporters somehow don’t get.
@Gavrilo:
Sanders’ California win that didn’t happen and was never projected to happen is proof the primary was over months ago. That Sanders chose to concede only after the FBI email indictment decision, and not after it became crystal clear he had no path to victory, is solid justification for the DNC discussion on how best to get him out of the race.
That absolutely NONE of what was discussed in the emails actually came to fruition is proof of what a nothing-burger this stage of the scandal is.
And that the scandal is only going to get worse, there is no doubt.
And the idea the primary wasn’t over because the DNC didn’t cancel the final elections is possibly the dumbest political argument that will be made today, even including the nonsense that Fvckface Von Clownstick will be tweeting later.
Jack–I have had multiple conservatives tell me Iran really does have a Death to America Day. They thought that humor was serious.
Steve
@David M:
Oh, I have every confidence that it will get worse than that.
@David M: Not liking the facts doesn’t change the facts, which is something the Sanders supporters somehow don’t get.
See that thing over there? That’s Donald Trump, leading Hillary Clinton in several polls. Might I suggest paying attention to that because it is SLIGHTLY more important than winning a unit-measuring contest with Sanders supporters?
Mike
@jukeboxgrad:
How do you know they wouldn’t get serious support without more exposure? Honestly, your whole premise is Sanders’ support grew with more debates so he was cheated with only 6 but you poo-poo others that didn’t have serious support right off the bat as irrelevant? Perhaps they never would have cracked 10% but the fact remains if DNC favoritism boosted Clinton at the slight expense of Sanders, it did so to the major determent of the others. They took the same hit as him. At the very least, include them in the Clinton’s the Fav! whine to strengthen your position.
You act as if Sanders and Sanders alone got screwed by any potential ratf&cking. I’m pointing out there were other causalities that actually help your case but are totally ignored because they’re not The Bern. This is why you’re getting flack on this thread: it’s not that’s you’re wrong per se but utterly focused on the narrative DNC Favoritism = Unfair Bernie Loss that you miss the forest for the trees.
They favored her. It didn’t cause him(or anyone else) to lose. He might have done better (guesswork! what-if with data-trending is still a what-if) but it still wouldn’t have brought him home to the victor’s circle. Y’all got your scalp in DWS. Happy now? No? TS. It’s over, man. Don’t risk the country because y’all can’t accept the long-shot didn’t win. Bernie’s moving on – follow your chosen leader.
@Jack: You cite NewsMax to claim Politifacts is biased? Christ I didn’t realize you were quite that stupid.
@MBunge:
I can honestly say I’ve never seen someone over compensate via politics.
Why can’t you buy a Corvette like everyone else?
@Franklin:
You obviously haven’t been paying attention to Jack.
@Davebo:
I’m not sure what you were trying for, but I think it’s safe to say you didn’t pull it off.
Mike
Just wanted to correct the record .
JBG has said many times that there were 26 debates in the 2008 campaign.
This is how wikipedia put it:
Puts a different spin on things, doesn’t it? Sanders was getting about the same amount of “exposure” that Obama got.
That article also notes that Sanders officially began his campaign on May 26-three weeks after the date announcement. When Sanders the number of events was already set. IOW, the DNC did not limit the number of debates in response to Sander’s entry to the race, as has been hinted.
So maybe the debate schedule isn’t good evidence of bias after all.
@MBunge:
Just because you didn’t/chose not to understand it doesn’t mean it didn’t succeed Mike.
Number of two-candidate Democratic primary debates in 2008: 6
Number of two-candidate Democratic primary debates in 2008: 5
Number of three-candidate Democratic primary debates in 2008: 2
Number of three-candidate Democratic primary debates in 2016: 3
The Democrats needed to have more debates for the 2008 primary season because they began with eight candidates. By November 2015, the Dems were down to debates with three contenders; in November 2007, they still had seven.
Also, the Dems are moving to a combination of debates and town halls. In addition to the debates, they had 13 televised town halls/candidate forums during the 2016 season, including nine that had only Clinton and Sanders.
Facts sure can be inconvenient. I suppose that it could have been fairer if the DNC had launched a 24-hour Bernie Sanders channel, but you can’t have everything.
Note that DWS also voted to help keep payday lenders operating. That’s seriously messed up for a DNC chairwoman and face of the party to do.
We’ve just seen the result of the Republican Party giving up any control of the nominating process. How outraged am I supposed to be about the Dems maintaining some minimal level of control?
One hopes the Dem convention will come off as way more unified and professional than the R’s. But expect the supposedly liberal MSM to make as much as they can out of the DWS situation and to hunt down and interview every disaffected Bernie Bro they can find. And I hope everyone ran plagiarism software on their speeches. We can expect the press corps to jump on it if anyone else ever said, “I call this convention to order.”
Comment in SPAM trap — please release? Thanks.
Nikki:
If the DNC has decided “to get him out of the race,” then they need to say so. If instead they say they are neutral, that’s called lying.
The emails reveal that the DNC wanted to help Clinton, and the evidence is pretty clear that they actually did. I call that “fruition.”
I like to think that people who treat lying as “a nothing-burger” are people in the other party.
David M:
By continuing to run primary elections, the DNC was expressing this position: the primary isn’t over. If the party’s position is that the primary is over, but then it runs elections anyway, then those elections are a joke, and they turn the party into a joke.
And if the party wants to have a system where the contest ends as soon as someone has a big lead, then it should adopt that system, but that’s not the system it has.
KM:
They were cheated too. The fact that they were cheated is not irrelevant. What’s irrelevant is their decision to not publicly complain right now.
No. I don’t like it when people on my side make excuses for lying and corruption.
Good point. I have pointed out how we help Trump when we make excuses for lying and corruption.
A good example of claiming to know something that you don’t actually know.
stonetools:
Link:
Link:
Link:
Link:
You should look more closely at your wikipedia citation. Not every statement found on wikipedia is correct.
Yes, it wasn’t a response to his entry. It was meant to discourage his entry. Likewise for other candidates with low name recognition, who were thinking about whether it made sense to challenge someone with high name recognition.
Pch101:
A key difference between a debate and a town hall/forum is that in a debate the candidates are allowed to ask each other questions. This difference matters, and it’s probably one of the main reasons a debate is probably going to get a lot more viewers.
You have cause and effect mixed up. You should consider the possibility that there were more candidates in 2008 because there was less reason to think that the party had already decided to coronate one particular person. Announcing a plan last year of only 6 debates is one way the party communicated that decision.
Seriously, during the freaking invocation?? I can’t imagine why these guys don’t get the respect they deserve.
It’s hilarious: Sanders participates in 21 televised debates and town halls hosted by the Democratic party, and that still isn’t enough. And the guy isn’t even a Democrat.
There will never be enough to appease the sore losers. They will always see themselves as victims who were robbed and shortchanged and never given their due.
This is just one reason why populists should generally be ignored by the political establishment; populists will always have something to complain about because that’s how they roll.
Those two things are materially different. There is a reason why DWS was willing to have plenty of the latter but not the former. Treating them as equivalent, especially right after I just explained the difference, is roughly as honest as the DNC saying it was neutral when it wasn’t neutral.
@jukeboxgrad :
*sigh* And neither do you. You’re speculating. You are not speaking an immutable fact but rather an opinion with some data tossed in to match. You have absolutely no way of know it would have mattered but seem to be adamant it did. How many debates to get to the center of Frontrunner status? A 4 million voter gap is almost 25% of his total, the population of a state. This is not kinda close, this is a pretty significant number of people you think would have changed their minds. If you really think that one or more debates the average person doesn’t even watch (just highlights on the news) would have netted him 4 million plus due to being “known” after the kind of campaign he ran, I want what you’re smoking.
It wasn’t unfamiliarity that did Sanders in, nor favoritism. The plain fact is what he was selling was not what most voters wanted. Sanders voters overestimate how many of them there are just like the mythical Silent Majority Republicans hold to. Many many many articles have been written about how Sanders wasn’t reaching demographics he needed – something a debate wouldn’t have changed. Focusing on this one particular aspect and going “a-ha! they had it out for him so that’s why she won” is missing the point. This was not the killer flaw.
@KM:
Yep. Closing a double-digit gap would require a significant increase in turnout and/or a conversion of seven figures’ worth of Clinton voters.
From where were these voters supposed to come from? The math problem is insurmountable.
@Davebo:
Well, there goes the hope this won’t be the dumpsterfire the RNC was. I guess all we can hope for is a smaller fire…..
Consider these two statements:
A) If DNC had actually been neutral, Sanders would have done better.
B) If DNC had actually been neutral, Sanders would have won.
B would be speculating, but I’m not saying B. I’m saying A. A is just common sense.
I don’t know how much it would have mattered, but to say it wouldn’t have mattered at all is just nonsense.
That explains all the polls showing him stronger than Clinton against Trump.
Gotcha. So it was having the town halls and forums instead of “debates” that kept millions of people from voting for Sanders.
@jukeboxgrad:
Then why didn’t he win? Where were all these people when Bernie needed them? Not at the voting box, that’s for damn sure!
Could it be that *gasp* people lie to/troll pollsters and didn’t vote they way they said they would? Or change their minds or misunderstand the question or thousand other reasons why polls =/= reality? Polls are a guess, a statistical attempt to guess how the wind blows. If you haven’t noticed, pollsters aren’t doing so well lately *coughBrexitcough* Furthermore, who the F cares what the polling for Trump v Sanders is since that’s not going to happen. Might as well poll Trump v Kardashian if you’re running a popularity check. What’s Clinton v Cruz looking like since it’s just as relevant?
(Apologies for the snarkiness but it’s wearisome for someone to argue an AU when they live in this universe. At some point your patience runs out)
@Pch101:
Sanders delegates booed Sanders today.
@David M:
Bernie Sanders was oppressed by the media exposure, or something like that.
There was also something in the water that moved black voters to overwhelmingly support Hillary Clinton. They must not be real voters or something.
@PJ:
That was why Sanders staying in and his surrogates pushing the “rigged primary” nonsense was so damaging. We have our own dead-ender here, who just can’t accept something that has been obvious for months.
I want to see the DNC require 10 years of tax returns be published before allowing anyone up on a stage for all future candidates.
Bernie, whether it was due to crankiness, or simple incompetence or some more nefarious reason has never released his taxes despite promising to do so repeatedly.
I don’t know if this requirement would have shooed him off but it would be a good start.
It wouldn’t have hurt the RNC to require the same.
There is the Pauline Kael Effect. Far Left Candidates usually have more votes among people that we know from Social Media than in the real world.
I´m tired of seeing candidates that the majority of the people that I know in Social Media are support only getting 1% of the vote, and there is a runoff in Brazil (So, voting for these people is much safer than voting for the Ralph Naders in the United States).
As they say, pressure busts pipes and makes diamonds.
Josh Marshall is striving mightily to turn the DNC hack story into a “Putin Loves Trump” story and his latest effort is to explain that THIS hack and release of info on Wikileaks is not at all like those other hacks and release of info on Wikileaks because THIS info isn’t “newsworthy.”
It forced the resignation of the DNC chair on the eve of the convention, but a supposed journalist says it’s not “newsworthy.”
Mike
Does no one else find it ironic that the Democrats built a wall around their DNC convention and require photo ID to enter so they can safely condemn Trump and the Republicans for wanting to build a wall to get into the country and require photo ID to vote?
@Loviatar:
On November 8th, someone will be elected President of the United States, and it will be the exact same person whether I personally vote Clinton, Trump, or Mickey Mouse. I have no actual control over who the President is.
@David M:
This statement is the problem. I’ve provided evidence the DNC was sabotaging an already-doomed Sanders campaign and maligning his supporters unnecessarily to get him to shut up, but the mere perception that Sanders might sabotage Clinton’s chances in November is and always has been the more acceptable and legitimate concern. Your whole version of the analogy requires a false perception.
It doesn’t matter that the “Sanders isn’t a Democrat” meme was a line floated by the Clinton campaign as a means of delegitimizing his critique of Democratic administrations. It grew into a full-blown otherizing on its own based on faulty perceptions. And it’s not like you could discuss this perception rationally with people, wrapped as they were in confirmation biases and a militant political mentality. Instead of thoughtful discussion, critiques would be met with goalpost-moving, a cynical lowering of standards to accommodate and normalize the behavior criticized, and labeling the critic as a conspiracy theorist. Jesus, for expressing discomfort with both candidates, I was caricatured by stonetools as a purity-obsessed leftist in the greatest example of missing the point I’ve read aside from Pch101’s daily demonstrations of illiteracy.
But it doesn’t matter. People who bought into the militancy aren’t going to change their minds now, and enough false premises and bad faith have been thrown around to ensure there’s enough discord and disarray to give Trump an honest chance. Deflecting to Russian intel as a boogeyman trying to spoil the election misses the point: even if true, they didn’t make this stuff up. If the PUMAs in 2008 were given sufficient evidence to believe Clinton’s campaign had been smeared and diminished by the DNC, no way in hell would they have rejoined the fold in November. Saying Sanders wouldn’t have won anyway just makes the DNC’s behavior more egregious, thumbing a scale that didn’t need it to get the “right” result.
@Tillman:
From Bernie Sanders’ website:
Bernie Sanders is serving his second term in the U.S. Senate after winning re-election in 2012 with 71 percent of the vote. His previous 16 years in the House of Representatives make him the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history.
The Democrats are so good at lying about Bernie Sanders’ independence that even Bernie believes it.
jukebox grad:
you are right about Wikipedia not always being correct. But in this case, Wikipedia was right and your links were wrong.
Here is a handy Wikipedia page listing a detailed, linked schedule of all the 2008 events. The majority of them were called debates, it is true , but some were forums and one was an interview.So yeah Wikipedia!
Now you originally stated that the point of these debates is was to expose the candidate and their views to the people.
Once it became clear that the 2016 schedule had 26 events in which the candidate could air his views to the public- the same as 2008-, you went on to draw a strange distinction between debates and forums.
So what? The point is a candidate gets to air their views by answering questions in BOTH formats. It’s a distinction without a difference.
You know we can see you moving the goalposts, right?
Let’s review: there were 26 events in 2008 where candidates could air their views to the public, the majority of which were debates.
In 2016, 26 such events were scheduled, the majority of which were forums and only six were debates. Sanders and O’Malley asked for more debates, and got them.
There ended up being nine debates (IMO one or two more than needed). In light of all this, I don’t think the case can be made that the DNC seriously hampered Sanders in his effort to get his message out. Good try, though.
I actually think Democrats made a rational choice. Why would you vote for a crazy old man who can’t seem to put a coherent thought out other than “free beer for everyone” when you can have a candidate who can sell her office for tens of millions of dollars, trade cattle futures with the best of them, make lost billing records magically appear, be absolutely clueless about your husband diddling the intern pool right under your nose, run a home server operation like Zuckerberg AND dodge sniper fire like Wonder Woman.
Now that’s talent. Raw talent. Bernie Sanders indeed…….
I feel like opening a betting pool on how much Michelle Obama is booed tonight:
1) Not at all.
2) Only the first few times she mentions Hillary.
3) Every time she mentions Hillary.
4) More.
Any takers?
I’ll be back in a bit; I didn’t anticipate needing this much popcorn…
Debbie W. Schultz resigns : she is the scapegoat.That was probably predictable and expected.
emails indicating a scheme to hurt Sanders: an insurance. Also predictable.
Thousands of Sander’s supporters rally in protest at dozens of rallies. Support of Sanders is still very strong.
Sanders tells his people to support Hillary: he is doing as told.
Questionable funny numbers voting: no surprise. The whole “super delegate” thing was planned and controlled.
Party officials were involving major networks in this scheme: tell me something I don’t know !
@Stormy Dragon:
Which of those choice you listed would you like leading the country you happen to live in. Just so you know, your choice says more about you than the person you choose.
Oh, ok, so the fact that Putin, the leader of an adversarial foreign country, might have had something to do with this leak, and the fact that he might have a link to Trump, are of no importance at all…gotcha…
Well, after last week’s $hit show in Cleveland, it is understandable why you would want something to lick your chops about this week…
@Tillman:
With all due respect, spreading that story was a nothing burger. Hillary won in Nevada, and some Bernie bros acted up. THE END.
Ralston may have made the acting up look worse than it was, but this is a long, long way from any kind of dirty trick.Does it mean that Clinton stole the Nevada election?Nope. What really happened was that the Bernie Sanders supporters tried to steal Clinton’s victory, and they got frustrated when they couldn’t do it. Ralston should have said THAT.
Here, BTW, is the start of that supposedly nicer NYT article:
Doesn’t sound like the Ralston article was all that far off.
@Loviatar:
None of them. Which is why I currently plan to blank vote. Although three months is a long time, so who knows? I could die in a horrible accident and not participate in the election at all.
@An Interested Party: Well, after last week’s $hit show in Cleveland, it is understandable why you would want something to lick your chops about this week…
Oh, it’s already surpassed the GOP convention. The GOP had nothing as spectacular as the immolation of DWS. That it’s already a dumpster fire is not debatable; what’s to be seen is how big a dumpster, how many dumpsters, and what other “collateral damage” there will be.
@Tillman:
Boogeyman? Are you serious? Let’s be perfectly clear here: It’s likely a foreign government engaged in an espionage operation in an attempt to influence the outcome of an American Presidential election.
Whatever the DNC did re: Sanders’ campaign doesn’t hold a candle to that.
@Jack:
No. It’s a ticketed event, not a border 2,000 miles long.
Well of course you would downplay what Cruz did as well as Trump’s doomsday speech, among other things…you can only hope that things get worse this week…how sad you’ll be if that doesn’t happen…
@Stormy Dragon:
So you’re an unserious person who is incapable of understanding the importance of governance or governing.
As I said, your choice says more about you than you realize, let me do a little internet analysis of you. You’re probably white, you’re probably a man, you probably among the top earning percentile for your area or have a secure job with healthcare. Oh and yeah, you’re probably an asshole.
Spot on wasn’t I, got it on my first try.
@Jack:
No, but I do find it ironic that Republicans complain about government interference negatively impacting businesses yet want the federal government to have veto power over all hiring decisions in the country.
@Jenos Idanian:
click off
@Stormy Dragon:
What’s the difference between the two?
@Loviatar:
Well, I wasn’t interested in voting for Hillary before, but now that you put it THAT way, I can’t wait to cast my ballot for her.
I can’t believe her lead has dropped 20 points the last two months in the face of this brilliant “Clinton 2016: You Can Suck It” campaign strategy.
@Davebo:
There is no real difference. That’s kind of my point.
@Stormy Dragon:
So tell me what did I get wrong in my analysis. I thinking it was the you’re an asshole part, originally I went with you’re a huge asshole, however I reconsidered and went with the milder less confrontational, you’re an asshole. It seems I should have stuck with my original choice.
@Stormy Dragon:
Well I’ll hope for a blank vote then! But since there’s no difference I’d avoid driving to the polls at all. You might have a horrible accident and no one wants that.
@Loviatar: DICKatar strikes again! bwahahahahhahahahah
@Loviatar: Just gotta step in for a second.
So what? Do affluent white men not have hearts and minds? Are they robots, assembly-line made, one just like another?
Dismiss Stormy’s opinion because it differs from your own, not because it comes from a demographic you don’t like.
I can’t speak for the convention, but guys like Jenos are certainly going to need more popcorn for the comment thread at OTB this week. Wa!
Great job Sarah Silverman. They finally get the Bernie People quieted down and you had to go deliberately poke them in the eye in prime time.
After watching some of the convention this evening it is obvious that some of the networks are overly opinionated and
slanted to the point of propaganda. Conkrite and Brinkley would never be that unprofessional.
@An Interested Party: Oh, ok, so the fact that Putin, the leader of an adversarial foreign country, might have had something to do with this leak, and the fact that he might have a link to Trump, are of no importance at all…gotcha…
That is not at all what I said. It is entirely legitimate to attack Trump for being too friendly with Putin. I was remarking on a supposed journalist twisting himself into knots to not only try to hilariously deny the obvious news value in an event but the hypocrisy pretzel of BS over when hacking and leaking is good and when it isn’t.
Mike
@James Pearce: So what? Do affluent white men not have hearts and minds? Are they robots, assembly-line made, one just like another?
It is already painfully clear that if Trump somehow wins, liberals will by and large not be asking themselves intelligent and productive questions like…
Why did we nominate such a sucky candidate?
Where did we go wrong on politics and policy?
How do we win back the trust and support of the voters?
No, the response will be a primal scream of “WHITE PEOPLE ARE RACIST, RACIST, RACISTRACISTRACISTYEEAAAAARGGHH!!!!” and standing around with their thumbs up their butts waiting for the demographics fairy to wave her magic wand and solve all their problems.
Mike
@MBunge:
Actually it would be more like “idiots..” No caps required.
It’s good to see you doing your best to be grouped in there with them. However, should Clinton prevail in a 6% plus blowout (and that would constitute a blowout) will you finally mend the wounds on your pee pee and STFU?
@Scott:
Hear hear…
@Jenos Idanian:
It was yesterdays news by the time Cory Booker got done speaking 🙂
@MBunge:
You could keep raising the bar, and refer to Hillary Clinton as a poopyhead.
@James Pearce:
No, but they are likely to suffer considerably less due to a Trump presidency with it’s attendant Republican holding of the Senate than would minorities, women, and the poor, particularly if they are cis, hetero, and christian. Don’t get me wrong, all of us will suffer, but some will suffer far more. A Clinton win wouldn’t be a panacea for the disadvantaged, but the difference between a Clinton and Trump win for the disadvantaged would be the most extreme for a presidential election in my lifetime.
There is a reason Trump’s support comes from where it comes.
@MBunge:
I have no doubt that many liberals will do this very thing but I will not participate, nor will I indulge those who do.
@Grewgills:
I get what you’re saying, but saying “You’re an affluent white man so your views don’t matter” (which I hope we can agree was the implication) is not very different from saying “You’re a poor black woman so your views don’t matter.”
I believe we should take people on their merits instead of dismissing them because of the color of their skin or socio-economic position? Please tell me I’m not the only liberal who actually believes that.
@Pch101: Again, you prove your illiteracy. The Sanders isn’t a Democrat meme was spread to delegitimize his arguments, not to lie about his past. If you could read links provided to you, you’d know that.
@stonetools: It doesn’t sound like you even read the Ralston article or my point about it. Ralston alleges Sanders operatives directed by authorities in the campaign spurred his delegates towards being unruly. There isn’t a hint of that in the Times article, and it’s that contention specifically which led to media figures questioning Sanders’s judgment and speculating that he wouldn’t endorse Clinton.
@Mikey:
They also essentially laundered money for the Clinton campaign and engaged in media crisis management when the story got out at Politico. But again, the possibility of a Russian boogeyman is more important.
And honest to God, if you’re concerned about Russian boogeymen, think a little. If the Russians wanted to mess with our elections, why bother with emails to discredit Hillary Clinton? Why not go through the Uranium One deal, which occurred on her watch and could implicate the Clinton Foundation? If it came out that wasn’t on the level it would do far more damage to her campaign than emails Clinton backers have dismissed before they even know what’s in them.
@James Pearce:
Apparently. Based upon the WikiLeaks emails, liberals don’t care about “Homos” or black women with funny names.
@Tillman:
Because it’s effective, of course. And easy to pull off. And it aims directly at an issue the Russians know is most likely to damage Clinton’s chances: the rift in the Democratic Party between her and Sanders’ supporters. And it’s ready-made for the internet generation.
The intricacies of the Clinton Foundation’s dealings may be legitimately more serious, but they are none of the above.
And it’s ironic you accuse Clinton’s supporters of blithely dismissing these e-mails while simultaneously blithely dismissing Russia’s effort to influence the outcome of our presidential election by reducing it to a mere “boogeyman.”
@Tillman:
Doubling down on a bad argument doesn’t help your cause.
It’s not exactly a secret that Bernie Sanders isn’t a Democrat.
The US president is the de facto head of his or her party.
Why should Democrats want a guy who isn’t one of them to lead their party, and why shouldn’t they be cynical about someone who is trying to commandeer their party when he goes out of his way to say that he does not belong to it? Smart people should be able to see the problem, but I can see that you aren’t one of those people.
If Sanders wanted to have more credibility, then he should have either run as an independent or else joined the Democratic party. It’s not that tough to understand.
@Jack: Nope. Do you find it ironic that the RNC was a gun free zone?
@pylon: Only the building and its perimeter were gun free zones…made that way by the secret service, not Ohio/Cleveland. Meanwhile, numerous people openly carried the entire week outside the security zone with zero problems.
@Pch101: I’m not doubling down on a bad argument. You’re entirely ignoring my argument. You couldn’t possibly know its quality because you can’t read.
Remind me, did he speak at the Democratic convention last night? Isn’t it odd the Democratic party is hosting a guy who isn’t a Democrat? That the Democrats allowed someone who wasn’t in their party to run in their primaries? This all doesn’t strike you as a giant red flag that you’re wrong? Or are you going off a nonformal social standard engineered to discredit people on flimsy and fallacious grounds?
@Mikey: I’m distinguishing between allegations and facts. People are more concerned about allegations of Russian interference in the election which require inferences to make (you know, like conspiracy theories) than they are the facts of DNC partiality in the race. In terms of foreign nations involving themselves in our elections this would be nothing new: Israel has done so for decades, only four years ago being so blatant as to be rebuked for it. DNC behavior is new, and throws the integrity of the system into doubt. The DNC wasn’t pushed by Russia to compromise its own integrity months ago, it did that on its own and it is a problem worthy of discussion in its own right.
That Russia meddles in our elections is also a concern, but it is not a proven one and the people pushing it right now gain from the deficit of attention paid to the DNC’s behavior. Further, there are reasonable doubts that Russia’s the source. For one, the reports of Russia hacking the DNC say they occurred in April while the leaked emails include instances from May, as cited in that Taibbi article.
@Tillman:
Er, political parties can’t prevent individuals from trying to run under their banner. They can withhold their support from individuals who they don’t want, push their resources to other candidates, etc., but they can’t just shut those who they don’t like.
You really don’t know what you’re talking about. Sanders isn’t a Democrat, as his own website makes clear. Anyone who follows American politics should know that Sanders is the one guy in Congress who has consistently branded himself as an independent. The only one who hasn’t figured this out is you.
@Tillman: Don’t get me wrong, I’m not dismissing the things these e-mails reveal out-of-hand. I agree with you they raise legitimate and troubling issues, but I’m more concerned about Russian meddling because in my view it’s far more serious.
Maybe it’s just a bias introduced by the job I do, but I take even an allegation of government-sponsored intrusion very seriously, and this is more than an allegation, it has a good deal of evidence backing it up.
To your final point, the intrusions into the DNC network were not detected and eliminated until the second week of June.
@Tillman:
“Isn’t it odd the Democratic party is hosting a guy who isn’t a Democrat?”
Not really — see Zell Miller at the RNC in 2004 as a recent counterexample.
@Pch101: The Democratic party in Vermont has long had an understanding with Sanders when it comes to running candidates against his seat because he has caucused with Democrats. If the DNC wanted to push Sanders out originally because he isn’t a Democrat, they could’ve done so easily last year when he declared his intentions to run as one with a press release stating as such. The party signaled then that they were fine with his run, not that he wasn’t a Democrat. They expected him to be Lawrence Lessig, as did various learned commenters around here. It was only when he gained traction that his party affiliation came up, and again only to discredit him.
The history bears this out. In fact, noting how easy it is to run under the banner of the Democratic Party makes your argument even more ridiculous. It means you are judging him by a nonformal social standard only enforced to exclude.
@Moosebreath: and that’s why I had multiple questions! 🙂 Figured there’d be a counterexample somewhere to that one.
@James Pearce:
Ahhh I see James Pearce the defender of aggrieved white men have chimed in.
My point which you seem to have “mistakenly” misinterpreted is that while everyone may suffer under a Trump presidency, even you can not deny that certain parts of our population will suffer worse than others.
Something came to me last night as I read Andrew Sullivan, he is a bigot. The kind that sees identity politics everywhere because he can not imagine a world where anyone of importance and significance doesn’t look like him; white upper class male.
Sometimes non-white, non-male, non-rich, non-Christians have opinions, sometimes their opinions matter more because the circumstance mean they may have a particular insight; women + abortion. Sometimes it might be they may be impacted more severely than the overall population; Muslims + religion ban. Sometimes it might mean they have a history with the subject; African Americans + voting right laws. Doesn’t mean that rich white men’s opinion doesn’t matter, it just means in 21st century America its no longer the only one that matters.
@Tillman:
The fact that Sanders caucuses with Democrats should make it pretty obvious that he isn’t a Democrat, as someone who was a Democrat would not merely caucus with them.
Hence, the almost complete lack of superdelegate support. Superdelegates are party insiders, and few of them would want an outsider to take over their party.
The stuff that I am saying is fairly elementary. I am frankly concerned that a political junkie doesn’t understand something that is this simple. You may as well be upset that 2+2 doesn’t equal 22.
If Sanders had won the majority of pleaded delegates most of the so called Superdelegates would vote for him. It´s simple as that. Voters in Mississippi or Michigan don´t care for Superdelegates.
@Jack:
Well, you can make wide-ranging assumptions based on dubious sources if you want, but you’re on your own with that one.
@Loviatar:
Yeah, that’s me. Defending white privilege, not dismissing that whole framework as inadequate for understanding race dynamics in this country.
I mean, I get it. You’re deploying racism and sexism in the name of anti-racism and anti-sexism. It’s cute and all, but it’s also very, very dumb.
Good riddance to one of the most dishonest persons in politics. It’s amazing to me that it took this long. The DNC should have axed her after her blatant lies about Mitt Romney in 2012, but perhaps that was her job for the DNC . Even Anderson Cooper called her out for her bullshit. I guess that bullshit war on women narrative worked well. It’s ironic that the Sanders folks have the same issues with the DNC and media that Romney did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdLpFuIY3IM
When has anybody ever gone to the Russians in regard to a Presidential election ?
Oh yeah. There was this one time …
“On 9-10 May of this year,” the May 14 memorandum explained, “Sen. Edward Kennedy’s close friend and trusted confidant [John] Tunney was in Moscow.” (Tunney was Kennedy’s law school roommate and a former Democratic senator from California.) “The senator charged Tunney to convey the following message, through confidential contacts, to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Y. Andropov.”
Kennedy’s message was simple. He proposed an unabashed quid pro quo. Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. “The only real potential threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations,” the memorandum stated. “These issues, according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign.”
Kennedy made Andropov a couple of specific offers.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/27/ted-kennedy-soviet-union-ronald-reagan-opinions-columnists-peter-robinson.html
David M:
Yes, he was benefiting from increased exposure, which is why DWS preferred town halls instead of debates, because the former mean less exposure.
How ironic, since there are multiple Clintonists in this thread who are still denying that the DNC tried to help Clinton, even though “that has been obvious for months,” and recently became even more obvious.
And you should let me in on the secret and describe the “something” that I supposedly can’t accept, since you didn’t bother to say what it is.
KM:
You said this:
“Most voters” do not participate in the D primary, but the national polls I mentioned are an effort to understand what they want. If by “most voters” you mean registered D, then you might be correct. Trouble is, support from only registered Ds is not enough to win in November.
Unskew!
People who are interested in evaluating the correctness of the statement you made (“what he was selling was not what most voters wanted”).
MikeSJ:
You somehow missed this:
stonetools:
Good thing I didn’t do that.
Only if you think the size of the audience is irrelevant. Why would you think that?
If DWS agreed with your view that there is no difference between a debate and a town hall, she would not have worked so hard to make sure that we ended up with mostly the latter rather than the former.
@James Pearce:
I don’t agree that was the implication. The point, as I saw it, was that someone who sees no difference in electing an openly racist, misogynist, xenophobe bully vs a centrist with some pro social justice views is probably someone not directly impacted by racism, sexism, or xenophobia. It doesn’t mean that white men’s opinions don’t matter*. but it does mean that it is a hell of a lot easier for white men to dismiss those concerns.
When someone is blithely dismissing the concerns of marginalized people, it is entirely legitimate to point out that they can only do so because they don’t face the negative impacts of that marginalization. Please tell me you can see that.
I know the frame bugs you, but it is a useful frame. What you can’t seem to get past is that having privilege doesn’t mean having all the privileges. That yes, poor and poorly educated white men can have a difficult time of it, but that doesn’t mean that equally poor and poorly educated black women don’t have a harder time of it. That is what privileges are. Whether you like it or appreciate it or not, it remains true. That it isn’t the ultimate social science theory of everything doesn’t negate it’s value. Not every concept has to explain everything it touches to have any validity.**
* Frankly, if you can’t see that white, christian, hetero, men’s opinions matter more than anyone’s in the US you are a bit blind. This is less of late, but still true.
** For a very imperfect, spur of the moment analogy: Caloric intake is inadequate for understanding weight in any given human. It does, however, offer some valuable insight as to why that particular human weighs what they do.
@Grewgills: A fine analogy I saw recently was done by author John Scalzi on his blog.
Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is
@jukeboxgrad:
1) Must you always be such a pedant?
2) While being annoyingly pedantic and absorbed in trivialities you pretend that all 26 events in a crowded field were televised debates and that only 6 events in 2016 were televised debates. Both pretenses are wrong.
In 2008 there were 18 televised debates along with 7 other televised events. Granted that is more than 9 televised debates and 13 other televised events, but the field winnowed quickly.
What you studiously gloss over is that in 2008 there were 5 televised debates that included only Obama and Clinton and in 2016 there were 5 televised debates that included only Clinton and Sanders. This VAST conspiracy to silence Sanders ended up with the same number of one on one debates as last go round.
Please peddle your pedantry elsewhere, pretty much everyone here is tired of it.
* There was also a cross party debate that included Huckabee and Paul, but we all know that none of the republican candidates still in the race late would have joined something like that.
@Grewgills:
That’s not really fair to pedants. Pedants are petty but accurate.
The number of debates in 2007/2008 was 26. I already cited four solid sources for this claim. Here’s another one. Number of sources you cited: zero.
The correct number is 6. Same link. Also, “included only” doesn’t matter much. What matters is the total number of debates, which was greatly reduced this time around.
If caring about the difference between fact and fiction makes me a “pedant,” guilty as charged.
That must be why my comments in this thread total roughly 100 upvotes.
===============
Let me know when you are ready to demonstrate where I failed to be accurate.
@jukeboxgrad :
Except it is literally as relevant to what’s going on as a poll on Batman vs Superman. It’s fricken fantasy football for politics – an imaginary mashup for Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny (TM) and just as pointless.
I’m unsure how to make this any clearer: Sanders is NOT an option. Clinton is. Trump is. Stein and Johnson are, if anyone still cares. Running a poll on who to vote for X vs Y that contains anyone other then these people is mental masturbation politico-style. It’s fanboy-arguments over who’s better, not who has a shot at winning the Presidency. It doesn’t matter if it may show more voters want what he’s selling NOW – he’s closed up shop. The time to buy was THEN and there is definitive proof they DIDN’T when it mattered.
Given your obvious fondness for omitting relevant facts and ignoring all of the unpleasant details and context that turn your argument into Swiss cheese, it’s fair to say that accuracy isn’t your strong suit. The discussions above provide more than enough examples of this, and that’s just a couple of days’ worth of material.
@jukeboxgrad:
Read the descriptions of the events, Hell, even read the title of the damn article.
Jesus, PCH is right, I was doing pedants a disservice.
Five of the events were forums, but that distinction only seems to matter this year. Another event was cross party and included republicans. Yet another was radio only, so if viewership matters so much… Finally another of the so called debates was a “mash up debate” with preselected video from the candidates edited by HuffPo and Charlie Rose. There were not 26 events that fit the description of what you demand of debates in this cycle, that is a simple fact that you can’t seem to grasp even when your chosen source lays it bare.
See above.
The correct number of debates with only the top two Democratic candidates for 2008 is and remains 5. Check your own damn link.; There was an additional event that also included Huckabee and Paul, that was rather a clusterfwck. Still, even including that, we have 5 vs 6, hardly an epic difference.
What matters is the total amount of time a candidate has to make their case televised nationally for free. The number of events was slightly reduced this time around from 26 to 22, but the field was considerably less crowed. If we broke down the minute by minute numbers from Obama and Clinton in 2008 vs Clinton and Sanders in 2016, I’d be willing to bet that the numbers are pretty damn close.
Apologies to actual pedants,
1) it is a little bit funny/concerning that you actually spent the time to tally your upvotes on an online comment thread. Perhaps you should find some better use of your time?
2) If you make enough comments a few ups here and another few there add up, but keep on patting your own back. I’m sure it feels good.
@KM:
You shouldn’t indulge the obvious schizophrenia.
One minute, Juke is arguing that everyone knows and loves Bernie, which allowed him to triumph in the polls.
The next minute, he’s arguing that Democrats were deprived of knowing all about Bernie, which explains his unfair! defeat in the rigged! primary.
The position is nonsensical and illogical on its face.
@Grewgills:
Definie “directly impacted.” Does a lecture on the awfulness of the white man count? (Not an individual white man, mind you, but white men generally, as if we’re some monolithic entity, one just like another.)
Useful for what? Perpetuating racist ideas?
Loviator literally thought he needed only 4 facts to know all he wanted to know about Stormy. How is that useful? Sounds useless to me.
@Jack:
Were they afraid to allow open carry on the convention floor?
@James Pearce:
Do you seriously not see how minorities and women are negatively impacted by systemic racism and sexism? Are you so blinded by your pique at SJWs that you are unable to see those impacts?
In short, no.
Useful for explaining the effects of systemic racism and sexism.
They really only needed one fact, the fact that Stormy sees no difference between Clinton and Trump even after being reminded of Trump’s racism, sexism, xenophobia and his desire to have those enacted in policy, to have a very high percentage guess at Stormy’s sex and ethnicity. People directly impacted by those things aren’t likely to see not difference. I understand it hurts your feelings for the sins of white folk to be laid at your door, but, in the grand scheme of things that hurt is trivial relative to the hurt faced by minorities at the hands of the state. If you can’t see that, you aren’t looking.
In all my decades on this planet, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people demanding to have their own noses rubbed in their own feces before.
All those familiar names… Ozark Hillbilly, michael reynolds, cliffy (as “Hey Norm”), anjin-san, An Interested Party, Al-Ameda…
@James Pearce: The irony is that, from what I remember of things Stormy Dragon has said in comments, Lovitar is wrong on at least two of his 4 points.
What do Sanders supporters not understand about Sanders NOT having minority support within the Party? The Clinton have been cultivating relationships with Black boomer age groups for 20+ years. Bernie is a Johnny Come Lately.
The Clinton will bend us over but at least we get dinner and conversation first.
@Grewgills:
Of course I do. But we’re not talking about systemic racism/sexism against minorities or women; we’re talking about racist/sexism directed at white men.
One can explain the effects of systemic racism and sexism without indulging in it. It is possible, and probably more effective.
Loviatar’s comment is stuck in a rhetorical framework that doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because posits that racism and sexism is pointed in the wrong direction. That it’s wrong to be racist and sexist towards women and minorities….but okay to be racist and sexist towards white men, if it’s in service of some good deed. It’s a bogus idea and should be chucked. Let’s not be racist or sexist at all. (Poker nights excepted.)
It doesn’t hurt my feelings. It hurts the cause of equality. If you don’t believe me, I give you Donald J. Trump.
@Just ‘nutha ig’rant cracker:
Lovitar was wrong as soon as the words “internet analysis” hit the keyboard, but yes, I would agree the profiling was somewhat off the mark.
@James Pearce:
Er, Loviatar said that someone who didn’t see the difference between Clinton and Trump could afford to be insensitive, and that being white and privileged likely had something to do with that insensitivity.
In essence, he’s claiming that Stormy Dragon is (a) selfish and (b) that he can probably afford to be.
Loviatar’s accusation may be right or wrong, but the assertion itself isn’t racist. It’s not exactly a coincidence that minorities are far less likely to support Trump than are whites, and no one on an American political forum should have to explain why that is.
@Pch101:
It was more like, “You’re insensitive, so you’re probably white and privileged.” But okay.
Loviatar could have responded to Stormy’s comment, arguing that one candidate prefers this policy and the other prefers that policy, therefore they are, in fact, quite different.
And Stormy might have replied that in a certain light, say that of the rich and famous, the type of people who ride in limos and eat prepared meals every night and have staffs, that Clinton and Trump are -kinda, from a certain perspective- the same.
That would have been dialogue.
When you guys go off on some white privilege screed, it’s a monologue. We can nod along, but we can’t really add to it. If we point out the flaws of your arguments, it doesn’t cause you to strengthen them, to make them more defensible. It causes you to spiral into resentment.
And then it just becomes, “White Privilege, put directly on your forehead.” Ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
There was nothing in Stormy’s comment that called for that.
KM:
Let’s review. You said this:
I cited evidence challenging the correctness of that statement. If what I cited isn’t relevant, then neither is your statement. But the fact is that this issue is relevant, because it has to do with policy choices for the future.
What voters want “NOW” is indeed quite relevant. Current polls are still showing a lot of support for Sanders. Example:
These polls and these voters do matter. Clinton is smart enough to realize this, which is why she has adopted some of his positions.
=================
Pch101:
That must be why you are able to cite this many specific examples: zero. Which is your usual style.
It’s always fun to watch a straw man being demolished, which is another key element of your usual style. I’ll be waiting patiently while you go looking for my words which supposedly express the idea “that everyone knows and loves Bernie.” Good thing I never said that. What I did actually say is that his favorability grew as his exposure grew. This isn’t always the way it works.
Thanks for giving us another example of what Tillman correctly described as your “illiteracy.”
================
Grewgills:
The distinction between a forum and a debate always matters, and it’s important to understand what the words mean and how they are used. “Forum” is a more general term. “Debate” means something more specific. A debate is sometimes also described as a “forum,” but a forum isn’t correctly described as a “debate” unless the candidates get to respond directly to each other and ask each other questions. There’s a lot more drama when this interaction is allowed, and therefore the audience is typically larger. That’s why this distinction matters.
In 2007/2008, there were 26 events where the candidates were able to respond directly to each other and ask each other questions. That’s why I was able to cite five separate sources stating that there were 26 debates. You noticed that a few of those events were also described as “forums,” but that doesn’t mean they weren’t debates. It also doesn’t mean that every forum is properly described as a debate.
The bottom line is that the number of debates was greatly reduced this time around, and this was something DWS did to help Clinton. This was noticed almost a year ago, and recent events have only made it more obvious.
@James Pearce:
Apparently not, because you responded to it.
In any case, white privilege does exist. If you want to deny that, then no liberal worth his or her salt is going to take you seriously.
I guess some folks are never going to figure out than Sanders got plenty of air time and got clobbered fair and square. Cognitive dissonance must be all the rage, particularly among those who can’t figure out that a debate schedule that begins with eight candidates will necessarily be longer but not necessarily better for those who make the final round.
Just a thought: Next time, invest your hopes in a guy or gal who can appeal to both whites and minorities. It’s not just about you.
Another standard part of your style is to repeat fallacies that have already been addressed while pretending that they have not been addressed. One more time: there were probably more candidates in 2008 because there was less reason to think that the party had already decided to coronate one particular person. Announcing a plan last year of only 6 debates is one way the party communicated that decision. DWS made that announcement before she knew how many candidates there were going to be.
@Franklin: I never really liked her in the first place. Too much stupid spewed forth by her on some subjects for me to have any support for her.
@jukeboxgrad:
The source you cited didn’t also call all of those five events forums. For example:
There was also the “mash up debate” where candidates were asked and answered questions previous to broadcast and their answers were edited in by HuffPo and others.
You are wrong, but as always, even on the most trivial of matters you cannot admit it and so dig in further. You would make a fine badger.
@Grewgills:
Engaging with Juke is truly a waste of time. If he can’t figure out that 20+ debates and town halls are more than enough for getting ones message out, then it’s pretty hopeless.
I would have had an easier time getting a chihuahua to understand polling methods than I did with Juke on this post: https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/can-donald-trump-be-stopped/
That was all that I needed to see that this guy cannot be educated and is not worth the bother. As is the case with Jenos, only mockery is appropriate.
@James Pearce:
That’s what you are talking about, that’s not exclusively what all of us are talking about, largely because that isn’t the most important issue on the table.
Your comment here shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what systemic racism is. I will therefor respond to what I’m pretty sure you mean: I take you to mean that it is possible to argue aganst racism and sexism without use of the privilege frame and that it would in your opinion be more effective. Possibly and possibly not, depending on the situation. It has been effective though, witness James for one.
If that is your take away then you fundamentally misunderstand the argument. Understanding what privilege actually is within a social science framework does help to explain systemic racism and the defense of systemic racism by people who are by most counts decent people that don’t want to see others hurt. Blindness to privilege allows that dissonance.
The tenor of your response to the privilege argument almost every time it comes up here argues otherwise.
No, it doesn’t. Witness the increase of equality and people like James coming around.
Trump is an angry response to lost privilege, thus cries of ‘give our country back’ and ‘make America great again‘. It is the railing of bigots against the slow dismantling of systemic racism and sexism. They don’t see a more equal world as a positive for all, rather they see only their lost status, as white, male, christian, straight, whatever, you know real ™ Americans.
@James Pearce:
No, it was you are insensitive about these particular issues that affect minorities and women, so you’re probably not a minority or a woman.
Really, what I wrote was a screed that cut off all dialogue? Odd, given the somewhat calm and reasoned follow on.
@Grewgills:
I got involved to call out Loviatar’s “internet analysis” for leaning too heavily on race and sex and socio-economic status, to call out the idea that you can use these things to accurately predict behavior and opinions, or vice versa.
And yet, here I am being reminded, once again, of the systemic racism and sexism in our society, as if Loviatar was engaged in some righteous crusade to right an historic wrong rather than just trying to delegitimize Stormy’s viewpoint with some rhetorical garbage.
It would certainly help, especially after many rounds of this kind of thing, if you would accept that my disagreement with intersectional politics does not actually stem from my ignorance of intersectional politics. It would be helpful if my critiques of “white privilege” weren’t considered to be denials of its existence.
That is, it would be helpful if you guys (PCH included) demonstrated some good faith. After all, you’re not actually arguing with a Trumpkin, eager to restore white supremacy.
@James Pearce:
If good faith is absent here, it’s in this effort to redefine “racist” as “a person who is worried about racism.”.
@Pch101:
If Loviatar was worried about racism, he was more worried about dismissing Stormy’s supposed affluent white male viewpoint.
@James Pearce:
I have to commend you for your work ethic. You’re working quite diligently to not understand a fairly simple point.
I don’t necessarily even agree with Loviatar’s position, but at least I understand what he is saying. And it’s pretty obvious that it isn’t racist.
Trump is trying to create Jesse Jackson´s Rainbow coalition, from the right and from the whites.
@Pch101:
Meanwhile, you’re barely breaking a sweat.
Again, it’s not that I fail to understand the point. I fail to be persuaded by it.
Perhaps failing to be persuaded by weak arguments is a personality flaw. Or perhaps it’s the inevitable result of, you know, weak arguments.
You persuaded yourself to redefine racism as something that it isn’t. Noah Webster must be doing backflips in his grave.
What you are doing is akin to referring to a fireman who wants you to install smoke detectors in your house as an arsonist because he’s concerned about things that burn. If I said that it made no sense, then I would be overstating how sensible that it is.
@Pch101:
Speaking of….
big·ot
ˈbiɡət/
noun
noun: bigot; plural noun: bigots
a person who is intolerant toward those holding different opinions.
So civil rights workers must be bigots because they hate the Klan.
Yep, that sure makes a lot of sense.
@Pch101:
Skipping over “white privilege” now and going straight to the Klan…..
Keep digging, dude.
@Jenos Idanian:
Not sure what your point is, but you almost spelled my OTB ‘name’ right, so thanks.
This is what I posted:
One thing is certain, conservatives are schizophrenic on the issue of who is our number one enemy. Russia? Not the same as in 1955, but definitely a concern today.
Trump is in deep with Russian lenders, so it’s not surprising that Russian hackers might have done Trump a big favor by hacking and leaking DNC email.
Hey, you’re the one who is asserting that anyone who objects to the views of another must be a bigot.
Apparently, hating the Nazis is exactly the same thing as being a Nazi. The things that I learn on the internet…
@Pch101:
No, I’m the one who was asking for some good faith.
And you give me the Klan and Nazis…jeez.
I’m curious: On Planet Pearce, is there any possible way to criticize white racism without being labeled as a bigot?
@James Pearce:
You described Loviatar’s original comment as an example of systemic racism and sexism. If you believe that, then you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what systemic racism and sexism are. I know we’ve gone round and round on this more than once, yet you still choose to cast any argument that invokes privilege as systemically racist. On this topic and, so far as I am aware, this topic alone with you I find you to be either willfully ignorant or blinded by your pique with the construct.
No, I am arguing with an otherwise fairly progressive individual that often seeks to delegitimize large swaths of the current civil rights movement*. As Dr King said so long ago:
I wouldn’t go that far, but when supposed allies in the effort against the systemic oppression of women and minorities seek to delegitimize large swaths of the movement that is out there on the daily putting in the yeoman’s work, it doesn’t help.
* people labeled by themselves or others as SJWs and anyone who uses the privilege frame
@Pch101: 3 simple words: Don’t be racist.
Everybody counts, or nobody counts. – Harry Bosch
@Grewgills:
I described it as a racist and sexist attempt to be anti-racist and anti-sexist. You’re the one who brought up the “systemic racism” stuff.
The civil rights movement? It does not support racism or sexism against white men.
So on Planet Pearce, calling out a bigot is considered to be racist?
I’m just trying to understand the ways of your people, because this isn’t how things are on Planet Earth.
Here on my planet, a guy who tries to stop racism is considered to be opposed to racism, not a racist. Keeping your mouth shut or pretending that racism isn’t happening are not considered to be superior options.
If somebody says that some sensitivity is in order, we don’t label him or her as a bigot because that doesn’t make a damn bit of sense. That’s the case even when Mr./ Ms. Sensitivity is misguided or overreaching.
@James Pearce:
You said
Perhaps you were simply unclear in your writing, but the clear referent as your sentence reads is ‘systemic racism’.
You also with that sentence and in general through these discussions describe using the privilege frame as being racist and sexist. That would demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of either the frame or of what racism and sexism are. Keep in mind there is a difference between a frame being racist and sexist and some people using that frame in a bigoted way.
No, it does not support bigotry against white people or men.
Explaining how the current entrenched system supports racism against non-whites and sexism against women isn’t racist against whites or sexist against women. Neither is explaining how growing up in that environment that affords them privileges much less available to others can lead many white people and men to be blind to their privileges and the negative impact they have on others.
Are you similarly of the opinion that #BlackLivesMatter means ONLY black lives matter, or do you understand that it means that black lives ALSO matter?
I bring this up because the underlying issue/misunderstanding is the same.
@Pch101:
You’re a sucker if you think Loviatar was “trying to stop racism.”
@Grewgills: First use of the term “systemic racism” in this thread came from you on Tuesday when you asked:
Now I see that question not as an innocent entreaty for us to get on the same page, but as a MASSIVE diversion.
Just to remind you, the statement you guys found so noble and helpful to the cause of equality was this:
Really backing a winner there, guys.
I see it as context.
Which in turn was a response to someone not finding a meaningful difference between Trump and Clinton. On the one hand we have an openly racist, sexist, and xenophobic candidate with massive ethics problems and on the other we have a fairly middle of the road candidate with ethics issues (some real, others manufactured). For someone to see no meaningful difference between them requires them to support, look past, or discount the open racism, sexism, and xenophobia. The people most likely able to do so are people who are not the targets of his racism, sexism, and xenophobia. That is pretty obvious and is born out by his supporters and his polling among different groups.
I don’t find Loviatar’s comment noble or particularly helpful, but I also find his assumptions rather obvious and I don’t find them racist or sexist despite being a white male myself.
POCs and Women have the right to vote for horrible candidates as anyone else. The idea that if you are going to vote “blank”, then, you are probably a White Person that does not care it´s horribly sexist and racist.
I was going to let James Pearce continue to dig his hole uninterrupted, however since I’m being slandered, I decided to jump back in with an additional comment.
Stormy Dragon made a comment that showed his total unconcern that the Republican nominee for president was a sexist, racist demagogue. That led me to the assumption on his probable sex, skin color, religion and wealth/job status. James Pearce who has a history on this and other sites of defending white male privilege chimed in at that point to defend, guess what, white male privilege. James Pearce’s reasoning for this; he is just defending white men from reverse racism.
James Pearce I have a slogan for you, I suggest you get some T-shirts made up.
– Don’t worry about white male privilege, as a white man, I’ll tell when you need to worry.
@Andre Kenji:
Anyone can vote for a horrible candidate. I think logic dictates that the object of racism is considerably less likely to vote for the racist than the person that is not the object of that racism. The same idea holds true for sexism and xenophobia. Is that racist or sexist of me to assume?
Does anyone remember what these guys are arguing about?
So how can I receive permission to express a dislike for racism, when doing so would make me a racist? The rules are so complicated on your planet.
@Loviatar:
Half the f-ing country is totally unconcerned that the Republican nominee for president is a sexist, racist demagogue. With idiots like you demagoging everything from Disney princesses to video games to Ghostbusters remakes and complaining incessantly about the privilege of white men, it’s a wonder why.
I see a black president, black police chiefs in every major city, black men who basically single-handedly won the Super Bowl and the NBA championship, a black woman who rules TV, and I see progress. Some people think “Awmagerd, they’re taking over.”
You just see white privilege.
You should make room in your own mind for a difference of opinion. Do it for your own sake. And do it for ours.
@Grewgills:
I find them rather basic, about as sophisticated as a Rage Against the Machine song.
To be clear, the framework (social justice, or whatever) isn’t racist or sexist. It just makes it too easy to be racist or sexist towards white men. I keep talking about “flaws” in the framework, and I keep trying to point out that this is the most basic one.
If you want to get rid of racism, you can’t scapegoat anyone. Yes, even white dudes.
@wr: Oh you know, just important stuff like race in America…
@Pch101:
Little did you know, in your sarcasm hides an incontrovertible truth.
People wonder where my DICKatar voice comes from. Its from the fact that I no longer have patience for these idiots.
James Pearce has taken every argument presented to him as an attack on white men. His response to polite, well mannered arguments from Pch101 and Grewgills is to denounce white male privilege out of one side of his mouth while defending the aggrieved white man from reverse racism out of the other side.
How do you argue with that?
@James Pearce:
Not everything obvious is complicated.
It isn’t racist or sexist to note who set up an oppressive system or who gains most by that system. Pointing out that your life was easier because you are a white man not subject to systemic racism or systemic sexism isn’t racist or sexist. Neither is pointing out that living in that system and facing whatever troubles you have makes it harder for you (or any white male, particularly cis and hetero) to see the privileges inherent in your position. Now pointing those things out can rankle and it definitely makes a lot of white men resentful and feel they are being discriminated against, but it isn’t racist or sexist in any meaningful sense. The argument against it seems mainly to be that if we make whites and men uncomfortable in this way that it makes progress more difficult. On that we disagree.
It isn’t scapegoating to point out who built, primarily maintains, and primarily benefits from systemic discrimination.
Look, I’m not and as far as I can see no one here is saying white men are less valuable or have less valuable opinions in general. All that is being said is that the victims of oppression find it much harder to ignore and might have some insights into that oppression that people not subject to it don’t. I don’t think any of that should be at all controversial.
@Loviatar:
You, apparently, can’t.
@Grewgills:
I think that’s exactly what Loviatar is saying. Does Loviatar realize it? Probably not.
Don’t be like Loviatar.
@Grewgills:
Nothing you or Pch101 said is controversial. In fact nothing I said is controversial either, a lot ruder that you two, but not really controversial. What James Pearce is having problems with is the realization of something I said about a 100 comments ago.
He can’t get over the 2nd part of that quote.
@James Pearce:
I think you are misunderstanding what he’s saying because you have such a problem with the whole framework he’s arguing from.
Do you have any disagreement with what I wrote?
@James Pearce:
That it’s too late for psychiatry to help you?
@Grewgills:
I do not agree that systemic racism/sexism will be conquered by the social justice movement. To the contrary, I think the social justice movement will only exacerbate systemic racism/sexism.
You pay attention to current events. Tell me I’m wrong.
@James Pearce:
Well, in the last 6-8 years while the current social justice movement was active, gay marriage has become the law of the land, transgender and other gender queer issues have finally seen light and a huge spotlight has been shone on disproportionate police violence to African Americans which has forced a number of large law enforcement agencies to adopt new policing techniques, so progress is being made and at a greater rate than previous. Systemic racism/sexism/homophobia/transpobia are decreasing, not increasing.
In that all you seem to see is the hetero white backlash against ‘losing their country’. Trump is the embodiment of that fear of their country changing. That isn’t an increase in systemic racism etc, that is an increase in some bigots being louder and prouder of their bigotry. Now, if Trump is elected along with republicans in the Senate we will no doubt see an increase in systemic racism, but that isn’t what we’re seeing now.
This argument of yours is yet another reason why I think you fundamentally misunderstand what systemic racism actually is.
Very nice article. I certainly appreciate this site.
Continue the good work!