The League of Conservation Voters hasn’t endorsed a presidential candidate this early in the last thirty years. In January 2004, they gave John Kerry the nod, but only after he had won the votes of some caucus and primary voters. Yet, today, they came out in favor of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The group’s president, Gene Karpinski, said it needs to activate volunteers and donors early to make sure Clinton is strongly positioned for the general election.
The LCV Action Fund picked Clinton over Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley because “the stakes are so high” and Clinton “has proved she’s an effective leader who can stand up to the big polluters and push forward an aggressive plan to tackle climate change,” Karpinski said.
At least they waited until it was clear that Vice-President Joe Biden wouldn’t be a candidate, right? I mean, their rationale isn’t that Clinton has the strongest record on the environment. Their rationale is that they need to get an early start.
And that’s kind of odd, because no one is stopping them from talking to their members about the importance of a Democrat winning another term in the White House. For some reason, they think they need to convince their members that that Democrat must be Hillary Clinton. And it’s incredibly urgent, despite her B-minus lifetime rating.
The LCV scores all federal lawmakers on their voting records, and Clinton has an 82 percent lifetime record, compared with Sanders’s 95 percent. While the group does not evaluate governors, its state affiliate Maryland LCV issues occasional governor scorecards, and O’Malley received an A-minus rating for 2007-2008 and a B-plus for 2009-2011.
Now, sometimes you just want to do a favor for a politician whom you hope will win anyway and with whom you expect to work. An early endorsement gives the LCV a card to play with a future President Clinton. But if there’s really a need for such transactional behavior, the merits of the endorsement seem even more dubious.
The LCV has a lot of members, many of whom support other candidates or haven’t made up their minds. Not of all them appreciate seeing a thumb on the scale like this for the candidate with the poorest environmental record. A LCV spokesman justified their pick by arguing that Clinton’s rating had been harmed by missed votes the last time she ran for president. That’s undoubtedly true, and Clinton is running on a strong environmental platform. It might have been nice, however, to wait a bit and have more than one debate before the nation’s leading environmental lobbying group made an endorsement.
Now, sometimes you just want to do a favor for a politician whom you hope will win anyway and with whom you expect to work. An early endorsement gives the LCV a card to play with a future President Clinton.
And what is that? Endorsing her this early despite her mediocre record means LCV has no power. None. It’s why progressives get very little, if ever, of what they want.
But it’s not rigged. Everybody knows that teachers favor the “B” student over the “A” student. And this early endorsement might lead to many more mega-donations from super wealthy Clinton supporters.
The GOP has a gaggle of nutcases running and the DEM has fixed the nomination. If not for the chance that a majority DEM primary voters reject having this woman shoved down their throats, there’s no reason for observing this election cycle spectacle.
Yes, yes, because she is but a longshot right now.
OT: hey Boran2, any idea why the Orange Place decided to make such a mess of their site?? looks like the National Enquirer or one of those “10 celebrities you didn’t know were smart” lists over there now. all it’s missing now is tons of autoplay cr@p
I don’t know why it was changed but it surely is a mess. It’s harder to read, harder to comment and harder to post a diary. Progress.
Lucky me! Being banned means that I don’t have to waste any time experiencing all the features and bugs of the new system or commenting on them. Do agree that it’s not easy on the eyes.
Banned? What, did you say you were going to vote for an independent? Had some questions about building 7?
Poorly phrased one or two sentence comment before logging off for a few hours. When I returned was confronted with a bunch of responses accusing me of being racist and I made the mistake of attempting to respond to some of them while the pile on continued. What I wouldn’t do was retract what I viewed as the truth in my original comment. Curtains for me within minutes.
I must be the cleverest racist in the country because that was the first time in ten years of commenting and writing diaries there that such an accusation had been made against me.
It’s much calmer and more thoughtful here at the Pond, but with enough differing perspectives and opinions to keep the threads interesting. So, all in all, it was a plus for me to be banned from dKos. Might have been the last one from the early days of the site to leave.
I was never banned there, but I got tired of the a-holery, including the defense of it from those in charge.
Was often tempted to do the same, but the big nudge got me first.
There’s always been some of that from Day 1. What has really bothered me recently is an increase in inflammatory headlines and inaccurate diaries, inexcusable for front pagers IMHO. There are still many wonderful individual diarists who are informative, entertaining and insightful. The discussions in comments have always been a big plus if you know when to duck out when they get sidelined. For me the worst part of the new format is the difficulty in following discussions. I think Kos has killed the goose that laid the golden egg. Regular users, as opposed to those drawn in by inflammatory headlines, are regular uses because of the great discussions.
yes, very well put.
I remember Marisacat being banned for reasons that were not obvious as well.
Lots of people have been banned. Some deservedly so.
A few for having a bad day, and some of those unbanned after groveling. Had there not been a gang there that had been after me for a few months, I may have survived that single comment. It took the dKos administrators a few more months to recognize that they were indeed a gang of bullies and ban them.
Marisacat was interesting. She could be very perceptive, but too often that was undermined by her own issues. I always got along with her, but sometimes it wasn’t easy. Can’t say that I ever knew what her specific offense was, nor did I ask her after the fact, but it came early and during a period when she took it upon herself to find and disclose the real identities of some users and suggest or assert that they were operatives. They weren’t except for one, and she always knew less than she strongly hinted that she knew.
I got banned from Balloon Juice. Similar lynch mob strategy to rid themselves of dissident thought.
They’re like Scientologists searching out “subversive persons” and any religious or political organization that engages in witch hunts because the truth is dangerous to their irrational orthodoxy.
ah, yes, building 7. I almost got banned over that – heaven forbid one might have actually seen it fall and have some thoughts about it – but I guess the mods were off duty that evening.
Sometimes there’s a fine line between posing questions and lapsing into paranoid thinking. Too many people are inclined to the latter and get there with no effort on their part when legitimate questions are raised. The whole rightwing is there most of the time and appear to be incapable of even discriminating between legitimate and crazy-talk questions and also refuse to accept the facts that answer both if it doesn’t confirm their suspicions.
Collectively, we are incapable of asking legitimate questions and having rational discourse about 9/11. Going there too quickly dissolves into “crazy talk;” so, IMHO better not to go there at all.
I know ppl who worked in bldg 4 and, as I said, watched bldg 7 fall and looked up close as soon as they let us in the area on Sept 18. it was a discussion about debris hitting building 7 and potential damage. bldg 6 was burned to a crisp but still standing. bldg 6 was unmentioned on any charts because it was where the gold was stored [customs bldg; also know someone who worked there] and it was given a low profile until they could remove the valuables – but it’s the “ghost building” one sees in some of the photos. anyway, the discussion was about falling debris on bldg 7, distance from and damage to other bldgs etc etc. facts were of no interest to the thread, I didn’t realize at the time that discussion of bldg 7 collapse was a bannable offense.
I value the Orange Place for some of the excellent diaries and discussions, also Hunter’s fp posts; usually if it’s an off mainstream topic there’s a small group and good discussion. don’t know why kos essentially shut down the site with this “progress” but maybe it’s because of the heated difference between Clinton and Sanders support. maybe he didn’t realize he was making the site unreadable.
WTC 6 was eight stories and WTC 7 was 48 stories and the foundation was small for the 48 story final design.
Engineering is a lot of science and a bit of art and then there’s the actual construction where additional and numerous other potential points of failure can be created. As it was long past the date where any engineering and/or construction liability for errors, omissions, “shortcuts,” etc. could be found, claimed, and collected on, it didn’t serve any public policy purpose to engage in such a long-term pursuit.
Having looked at a large amount of the publicly available information on the buildings, I’m satisfied that the plane crashes triggered the failures of those buildings. IOW — no hidden controlled demolition actions.
of 7? it wasn’t hit by the planes
so the question with 7 was what triggered the explosion of stored fuel. don’t have any conclusions on it myself, just curious
Maybe living in earthquake country gives me a higher tolerance for what appears to be anomalies in disasters. A certain amount of seeming randomness occurs.
neither 4 nor 6 were hit by planes either but were closer. that’s the problem. the question was whether the leaseholder, Silverstein “took it down” [as in “let’s take it down” as he was overhead saying] due to greed because it was beyond the most costly repair. real estate related greed in our area is even more common than earthquakes in yours; but there were other issues re: 7 due to what was housed in it,
Seems fantastical to me that Bldg 7 could be wired for demolition in a few short hours or that the plan and charges were laid in the days before 9/11 without anyone noticing.
Frankly, this line of inquiry bores me. The buildings collapsing made the events of that day more graphic and dramatic, but for anyone involved in the pre-planning (including any possible evil “false flag” perpetrators), the total collapse of several buildings wasn’t necessary. The death toll wouldn’t have been much higher if the buildings had remained standing.
There are far more interesting question to ponder.
well, yes that’s the question isn’t it. around here the questions aren’t considered boring, waiting for a real investigation. I personally lost many close friends and associates in the aftermath from aggressive cancers, esp lung cancer. ppl are on hold about finding answers, but no one is bored or moving on from it.
Was only speaking about the death toll on that day.
What difference would it make to those that suffered health consequences from the buildings collapsing if the buildings fell from the impact of the planes or unknown parties placed explosives in the buildings? Even if solid evidence of such explosives were found, that would lead to directly identifying the culprits. Hell, as of now, the anthrax letters culprit(s) haven’t been IDed, unless one accepts that it was Dr. Ivins which I don’t.
because the history matters,; because reality is real vs fantasy or made up cr@p. because the 9/11 commission backed off that. having history, vs not having history, makes difference in multiple ways. no one thinks facts will bring back their loved ones, but knowing the facts is important. esp when it’s not a desire just to not read that chapter, but one could if one wanted, but a shielding of facts. need I say more?
Appreciate that, but to uncover suspected truths one has to choose which holes to dig that have the best chance to produce a thread that will lead to more. Fourteen years on nothing has materialized from all the efforts looking at the NYC buildings. Entirely possible that there is nothing to be found there.
The conspiracy that some have proposed would have required a large number of people to perpetrate the crime. Odds are low that all of such a large number would carry the secret to their graves. So, someday, someone may talk.
OTOH, a small, tight, compartmentalized conspiracy is less likely to be cracked. For example, among the hijackers, only the four pilots needed to know that they were on suicide missions. It actually worked better for them not to reveal that component to the “muscle.” Was Atta the only contact for the other three pilots or did the others also have contact with Atta’s contact person?
well, as many [here in the area] have pointed out, it was a conspiracy, at least by the hijackers. and, evidently the conspiracy was known [see, PDB] as far as bldg 7 goes, its collapse may have nothing to do w the airplanes part of Sept 11, simply greed on the part of Silverstein [Silverstein, greed, surely you jest] as it may have been wired against eventuality already because of sensitive nature of its contents. he must have collected double or triple what it was worth. 4 and 6 also were not hit by planes, of course, and were much closer to the Two Towers.
Holy guacamole, Errol, you’re right — what a slow-loading mess.
I bailed on the place a long time ago, when the purge of black dissenting members happened. I was already pretty much fed up with the high ratio of pie fights and groupthink to substantive comments, and that pushed me all the way out. Never looked back, and very happy to have found my way (via the Motley Moose, I think) to here.
Yes — high ratio of pie fights and groupthink to substantive comments, Not what many were looking for, but majority rules. And that majority existed prior to the conversion from Blogger to Scoop.
agree. but the high volume of diaries means some interesting ones occasionally and the option of discussion so I often browse there. there’s a guy reporting on the fuel blockade of Nepal, for example, a horrendous, complex, situation.
That essentially makes their endorsement worthless for getting out the vote. And makes one want to audit their scorecard methodology.
Increasingly NGOs are looking useless at their missions and just places to place high-minded well-heeled college graduates for a DC experience. Which means, the idea of ending tax deductions altogether, including that for NGOs, is looking more and more attactive.
NGOs driven by the search for large donors to the point of putting twists in their mission or pulling punches have been labeled “veal pens”–essentially leading their small donors and actions campaign activists to the slaughter while not sacrificing their mission for “pragmatism”. For some NGOs, (cough, AARP) it has become just another form of political grifting in the high-living city.
The LCV would have been better off not endorsing anyone than this suspicious show.
But LCV has been among the least helpful environmental organizations for quite some time now.
There are plenty of small, charitable organizations that provide real value to society. Things that aren’t sexy, like rehabilative services for the handicapped. Many of these organizations have no lobbying presence whatsoever and would be effectively wiped out if they lost their tax-exempt status.
In the last decade I have, with a few exceptions, quit giving to national or international organizations. Instead I donate to regional or local groups where small donations and hard work can make a difference. And where almost all the money goes to the cause and not to support a large organization.
I like to bring excess groceries to the township food pantry. I always get a sincere “thank you” and I’ve been down to eating no lunch to feed the kids myself in my life. When I was diagnosed as sodium intolerant, I brought three shopping bags of canned vegetables to the food pantry (green beans, peas, and corn). You would have thought that they were three bags of gold.
In 2014 LCV funneled a lot of money to swing states to do grass roots work. They did a fair amount of heavy lifting around turnout in NH and elsewhere. I don’t think it is fair to say they are useless.
But this was a top down decision of the sort that views activists not as active participants in the organization.
I know someone who is in a senior position at LCV in a swing state. He told me his guess what the vast majority of their membership was for Sanders.
This is a strange decision. It may weaken the organization at the grass roots – where they have some successes.
That helps explain the rush to jump on HRC’s out-of-control bandwagon: preempt the rank-and-files preference for Sanders. The door is now shut for Sanders. This show the Clintons operate: someone has been promised something, favors, dollars and cents.
Politics.
I would expect it’ll weaken the org. Sanders supporters are serious and the wealthy donor thing turns ppl off.
Did AARP ever recover from supporting the Bush pharma boondoggle/ grift?
I think they bounced back just fine–like the NYT after Iraq.
The only organizations I can think of which paid for misdeeds are Susan G. Komen and (for the misdeed of being blah) ACORN.
I think this is the second time the brass in an organization circumvented what they knew was their membership’s wishes by giving a way-too-early endorsement to Clinton to avoid their members supporting Sanders. The NEA did the same thing. Sensing a pattern here.
I’d never even heard of the LCV until I read this post.
With so much drama in the L-C-V
Gonna give an early ‘dorsement to Hillary-R-C
…
Ok sorry, just couldn’t get that out of my head
The fix is in.
Carol Browner joins Center for American Progress (CAP)– April 21, 2011
CAP is headed by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle is a senior fellow.
In 1993, Browner was confirmed as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency where she served for eight years.
○ League of Conservation Voters welcomes former EPA Administrator Carol Browner to its Board of Directors (2011)
○ Soros going to bat for Clinton
HRC deploying her backroom deals. This kind of thing kills enthusiasm but I guess she doesnt want to be humiliated twice. It also sours me on unions quite a bit.
Used to piss off progressive branches in my union to be saddled with a DLC candidate every time.
OT – this is something; Montana, whose voters value actual Montanans running for office, vs. carpetbaggers (I believe the oligarch running for gov is from NJ), now has a [more or less] 54th generation Montana running as dem for Congress.
http://denisejuneau.com/
OT: A Bevin voter
Charles Gaba @charles_gaba
#ACASignups KENTUCKY: How big of a violin should I be playing for this guy?? http://ow.ly/UqRTC #ACA #Obamacare
12:26 PM – 9 Nov 2015
I would enjoy few things more than for Sanders to win and completely upend most of the assumptions people have about electoral politics. Maybe that would convince people that the focus on bullshit like endorsement and sweet debate performances and SNL appearances is just that. And from then on out, Democratic Party campaigns should be focused on demographic motivation and alignment rather than clinging to old branding techniques.
… assuming that our dumbass centrists and/or elites deigned to acknowledge the sea change, of course.
Not in the interest of our dumbass centrists and/or elites deigned to acknowledge the sea change to do that.
Imagine a Sanders-Carson race, it’s easy if you try …
Or does the electorate hate the word “Socialist” so much that they would elect the religious nut.