Post #421,158
11/3/17 11:22:14 AM
11/3/17 11:22:14 AM
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Hillary's control of the DNC started in August, 2015.
Donna Brazile spills the beans. Too late, of course. But better late than never. I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested. I’d had my suspicions from the moment I walked in the door of the DNC a month or so earlier, based on the leaked emails. But who knew if some of them might have been forged? I needed to have solid proof, and so did Bernie. ...
I wanted to believe Hillary, who made campaign finance reform part of her platform, but I had made this pledge to Bernie and did not want to disappoint him. I kept asking the party lawyers and the DNC staff to show me the agreements that the party had made for sharing the money they raised, but there was a lot of shuffling of feet and looking the other way.
When I got back from a vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, I at last found the document that described it all: the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.
The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.
I had been wondering why it was that I couldn’t write a press release without passing it by Brooklyn. Well, here was the answer.
When the party chooses the nominee, the custom is that the candidate’s team starts to exercise more control over the party. If the party has an incumbent candidate, as was the case with Clinton in 1996 or Obama in 2012, this kind of arrangement is seamless because the party already is under the control of the president. When you have an open contest without an incumbent and competitive primaries, the party comes under the candidate’s control only after the nominee is certain. When I was manager of Al Gore’s campaign in 2000, we started inserting our people into the DNC in June. This victory fund agreement, however, had been signed in August 2015, just four months after Hillary announced her candidacy and nearly a year before she officially had the nomination. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774But, but, but, SHE got more votes! Right? RIGHT? FAR RIGHT?
bcnu, Mikem
It's mourning in America again.
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Post #421,165
11/3/17 4:55:26 PM
11/3/17 4:55:26 PM
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The actual <i>air</i> around here is getting *clammier by the day..
fumes from the firestorms..? nope, hardly a trace of that; this is the sorta 'clamminess' on one's forehead when awakening suddenly! from a particularly Real-istic, involved and sinister Dream-state.
* different from the aspect that rain is impending, also too..
It's not s'posed to be experienced in Waking-state. Usually.
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Post #421,220
11/7/17 7:07:52 PM
11/7/17 7:07:53 PM
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well if you want to go back under you can join the Donna Brazile dead pool
car crash, robbery gone wrong, hit and run etc
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman
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Post #421,167
11/3/17 7:16:29 PM
11/3/17 8:27:26 PM
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Meh. Old news.
The Stranger: But why did the DNC sign on to the deal in the first place? Brazile says Obama left the party hurting for funds, and Clinton's campaign "resolved the party’s debt and put it on a starvation diet." So it looks like the DNC was broke and lashed themselves to Clinton to remain solvent. (Fun fact: the DNC is still broke and struggling to raise money.) It's hard to square the claim "the DNC is and was in shambles" with "but their messaging was so powerful they managed to rig the primary election in Clinton's favor."
Nowhere in the piece does Brazile mention that Politico reported the fundraising agreement between the DNC and Hillary when it happened, nor does she mention that the Sanders campaign also signed a joint fundraising agreement with the DNC. Bernie could have raised more money through that agreement, which would have helped the DNC financially and also arguably helped down-ballot Democrats, but he chose to raise money through small donations.
[...]
At the time supporters of Hillary Clinton brushed off this evidence of the DNC's bias toward Clinton. Sanders wasn't a Democrat, after all, and anyway he could never beat Trump. When Clinton comfortably won the primary, her supporters pointed to the win as proof of her rightful dominance among Democrats, mostly because it was. Democrats clearly preferred Hillary Clinton. Some still do. It makes sense that she would work more closely with the DNC and thus reap the benefits of working closely with the DNC. It also makes sense that Bernie would distance himself from the DNC, and then slam Hillary for being close to the DNC and their corporate donors, which is exactly what he did.
Brazile's confessions in this Politico story provide more detail on previously reported financial agreements between the DNC and the Clinton campaign, but mostly they tell us that Brazile is promoting a book called Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump in the White House. And good for her. We're all just trying to survive the end times. But allegations that Brazile is providing definitive proof that Clinton "rigged" the primary in her favor are overblown.
Meanwhile, Bernie appears to be considering a run in 2020.
The only thing that didn't die in 2016 was 2016. FWIW. [edit:] Wonkette has more. Cheers, Scott. (Who wishes this meme about the all powerful DNC thwarting St. Bernard would die already.)
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Post #421,168
11/3/17 9:58:02 PM
11/3/17 9:58:02 PM
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Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much
..that this-all re the Sole proprietor of the DNC becoming just that: matters not a lot. As to theorizing that Bernie Couldn't [Possibly!] have gotten across to a significant %proles the utter Unsuitability of The Drumpf as wannabe-Dictator, well.. everyone's entitled to a theory. But there's always that [2+2=4] Conjecture, backed by that post-Bertie mathematician of recent discussion here.
There was also-too that short story by P.K. Dick re, "What if Japan/the Axis had Won ???" [what if Kistiakovsky hadn't solved the implosion problem?] I propose that Neither-of-us has any business 'deciding' we know just what Bernie et al might have done way-differently from HRC's rather smug Certainty of election?! -- whatever she screwed up in strategy?? -- and rest case.
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Post #421,169
11/3/17 10:58:15 PM
11/3/17 10:58:15 PM
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We'll have to agree to disagree.
The DNC's job is to run the Convention and to support the nominee. They don't run the primaries. But this is all old news that has been argued about for ages. Note the end of Drum's take: So Brazile herself, though she obviously disapproves of the JFA, says the primaries weren’t rigged and there was no internal corruption at the DNC that favored Clinton. In something that suprises me not at all, it appears that even though Clinton had substantial authority and could have rigged things, she instead used this authority to raise lots of money; make sure the DNC hired competent people; and try to get the party apparatus working again. FWIW. Cheers, Scott.
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Post #421,173
11/4/17 3:40:59 AM
11/4/17 3:40:59 AM
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OK, Drum spends vastly more time sleuthing out the barbarities..
than moi. It's Good that Brazile concurs that HRC *didn't* spike the last stage (and Bernie's choice of funding was Bernie's.) Think you win this one. :-)
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Post #421,174
11/4/17 10:01:06 AM
11/4/17 10:01:06 AM
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You have to change things in order to get the power to change things
Bernie ran his campaign as though we were in a better world where it's not mostly about money. Hilary ran a campaign by the rules of the current world.
Trump, of course, ran according to other rules that also exist, but weren't thought to be the rules of politics.
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Post #421,175
11/4/17 3:11:05 PM
11/4/17 3:11:05 PM
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Perhaps the most charitable characterization of
a charity-less, unprincipled Classic Charlatan with mental issues [etc.] to date. Drumpf shall be a permanent word for [EEeuuuwww] in English vocabulary ..maybe *forever?
* he's made even That concept iffy.. given the nuke codes and other artifacts as amplify his nefariousness and give the New Banana Republic the shortest Life-expectation evah/locally and Worldwide (?) Welcome to the newest Cabinet Post:
Director of National Insecurity (akin to when the formerly-correctly-Named "War Department" was euphemised into being the [Hah..!] "Defense Department"..) Thanks, Geo Carlin. Shall dis-U.S. euphemisms become the major-est flaw in all those Other defects in "Murican 'character?'", the lexicographers all ask..
Carrion. another word to have taken-on Yuuuge new Responsibilities.
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Post #421,193
11/6/17 9:34:55 AM
11/6/17 9:34:55 AM
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I knew you'd come back with the Perez talking points if I waited long enough.
But, then there's that other agreement Clinton had ... In a letter to DNC members, Chairman Tom Perez noted that the party reached joint fundraising agreements with both Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. "The joint fundraising agreements were the same for each campaign except for the treasurer, and our understanding was that the DNC offered all of the presidential campaigns the opportunity to set up a [joint fundraising agreement] and work with the DNC to coordinate on how those funds were used to best prepare for the general election."
That may be true — but two Democratic officials tell NPR that Brazile and Perez are referring to two different things. In addition to that joint fundraising agreement the DNC reached with both campaigns, the party and the Clinton campaign struck that separate memorandum of understanding giving the campaign staffing and policy oversight.
That document was signed on Aug. 26, 2015 — before, among other things, Vice President Joe Biden ruled out a run for president.
The DNC has not denied this characterization or timeline. ...
Sanders and his supporters have long alleged that the DNC tipped the scales in the 2016 primary. A frequent piece of evidence cited for this was the decision to hold debates on weekends when viewership would be lower. Emails released by WikiLeaks on the eve of the 2016 Democratic National Convention showed that some DNC staffers favored Clinton and were vocal about it. U.S. intelligence believes those leaked emails originated with Russia's efforts to disrupt the 2016 campaign. Interesting "strategy" of the DNC that, to hold debates on week-ends so as not to invite too much of that Bernie support (recall after each and every debate, his numbers went up and hers went down). But Brazile's hands aren't exactly clean. Brazile herself was eventually at the center of that controversy. Emails hacked from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and released by Wikileaks showed that Brazile, a former CNN commentator, passed along details about questions Clinton would receive at a primary debate and a candidate forum hosted by the network. Following those revelations, CNN ended its relationship with Brazile. http://www.npr.org/2017/11/03/561976645/clinton-campaign-had-additional-signed-agreement-with-dnc-in-2015
bcnu, Mikem
It's mourning in America again.
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Post #421,194
11/6/17 10:25:05 AM
11/6/17 10:25:05 AM
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Meh.
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Post #421,199
11/6/17 4:15:18 PM
11/6/17 4:15:18 PM
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Meh == 'flip coin'
Does that mean that there are no 'real'-Facts ... even Here ... either?
Then Fall, Cæsar :-( ☂
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Post #421,204
11/6/17 5:12:57 PM
11/6/17 5:12:57 PM
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This is turning into 9-11 Truther / JFK / Illuminati level distractions, IMO. YMMV.
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Post #421,210
11/7/17 8:26:49 AM
11/7/17 8:26:49 AM
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I think we can find some common ground on this.
I would have preferred Bernie to run as an independent (that is, after all, what he really is in that no democrat since B. Clinton would be recognized as anything other than a Liberal Republican by a genuine Democrat). But then I would also prefer to live in a country where the entirety of our body politic wasn't owned by the Banker/Big Pharma/Big Insurance/Big Oil/MIC class. But such is not the case.
The DNC didn't like that "an outsider" could come into their primaries and remind their base (who never has anywhere else to go) what a real Democrat looks like. It didn't help matters that the DNC and all established democrats since 1992 were repugnant enough to real Democrats that Bernie's camp felt no compulsion to help this other wing of the Plutocrats Party survive. So, they got angry with him. He was showing them up and worse, wouldn't bail them out financially. They, therefore, had no difficulty with allowing his competitor's campaign (herself a tried and true member of the oligarchical wing of the democratic party) to control "strategy, messaging and personnel." That all makes sense. The DNC was trying to save itself and had Bernie won (and therefore have had control of the DNC) then all the corporate shill lackeys that have had control of the democratic party since B. Clinton would be out on the streets. To make matters worse, they were hosting him in their primaries and the ungrateful bastard wouldn't pay them off. And they'd grown very accustomed to being paid off.
So, was the nomination rigged in the sense that votes were changed? I don't think so. But I do think, and am confident the evidence suggests, that the DNC did not want this outsider transforming its party back into the party of Roosevelt. I do think when decisions had to be made about how many and when to have debates, this anti-Bernie bias played into the decision making. How much that affected the ultimate outcome, I don't believe anyone can say.
The Superdelegates were supposed to keep an outsider (read: non-corporate shill) from having any chance of winning the nomination. It's worked pretty well so far. But 2016 looked like it might actually be a year in which the superdelegates alone could not keep a Progressive at bay.
bcnu, Mikem
It's mourning in America again.
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Post #421,211
11/7/17 8:58:27 AM
11/7/17 8:58:27 AM
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Actual members of the Democratic Party supported an actual member of the Democratic Party. Shocking!
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Post #421,212
11/7/17 10:42:02 AM
11/7/17 10:42:02 AM
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"... Standard Operating Procedure for 15 years..."
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Post #421,213
11/7/17 11:02:05 AM
11/7/17 11:02:05 AM
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My last: SOP can be cancerous, too, y'know?
bcnu, Mikem
It's mourning in America again.
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Post #421,171
11/3/17 11:19:35 PM
11/3/17 11:19:35 PM
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You'll be glad to hear Trump wants to sick the DoJ on Crooked Hillarry about that.
CBS: Donna Brazile just stated the DNC RIGGED the system to illegally steal the Primary from Bernie Sanders. Bought and paid for by Crooked H.... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017
....This is real collusion and dishonesty. Major violation of Campaign Finance Laws and Money Laundering - where is our Justice Department?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017
Alex
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
-- Isaac Asimov
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