Something to think about when digesting tonight’s Democratic debate is that the Real Clear Politics polling average for New Hampshire presently has Bernie Sanders leading 48.0%-44.0%. In looking into what happened in the Sanders campaign’s national data section I was able to discover that the number crunchers are pretty confident about Sanders winning in the Granite State.
As a warning, however, I remember when Bill Bradley was similarly well-positioned to win New Hampshire before he got his clock cleaned in Iowa and his advantage disappeared overnight. I think it’s probable that Sanders would win the primary if it was held next week, but the race there is tight and probably fluid enough that Iowa could flip things against Sanders.
And Iowa is looking pretty bad for Sanders right now, mainly because Clinton is consistently polling over 50% in a three-way race. The caveat here, however, is that polling in a caucus state like Iowa is notoriously inaccurate. A month out from the 2012 Iowa caucuses, no one saw Rick Santorum as a threat to win. Organization matters in Iowa.
I think the media, and I’m guilty of this too, has kind of written off Sanders. But he’s still in a pretty decent position. I also think any fair assessment of tonight’s debate would have to acknowledge that Sanders is getting better and better at going toe-to-toe with Clinton. She’s improving, too, but it no longer looks like as much of a mismatch.
I think it’s possible that Sanders could win New Hampshire. Iowa seems like a longer shot.
It’s more of a problem to figure out where Sanders wins next after he wins New Hampshire. But he probably should be getting more respect and attention.
I believe the progressive tone of the debate is entirely due to Sanders. Without him the DNC would be selling a watered down, trickle down scam. Finally we get a party with an actual alternative viewpoint. I’m encouraged.
Sanders loses Iowa. New Hampshire is close one way or the other.
Sanders loses Nevada and gets annihilated in South Carolina. Alabama and Arkansas go the same way. Maybe Colorado has enough left wing Democrats to make that competitive, but Georgia doesn’t. Texas doesn’t. He maybe wins Massachusetts and wins Vermont. But Oklahoma, Virginia, Tennessee and even Minnesota are reaches for him.
He has to win Iowa to put the race in play.
in that scenario does he stay in past SC?
He can stay as long as he has money to campaign. He’s not dependent on kingmakers or sugardaddies turning off the money tap. If he loses, how long will his supporters hang with him and vote in later primaries? That is the question. Or are they gone by the day after SuperTuesday if he has no delegates?
I’m thinking that stopping Hillary is going to be a major factor that keeps his supporters going. But I could be wrong. But his is like an embedded insurgent campaign.
what supporters want aren’t typically a consideration in those decisions, but if I had to guess he’ll probably want to stay in until the Vermont primary if only for sentimental reasons.
after last week, I’d say yes. nothing on climate change agreement, not letting Sanders talk about job creation – voter info. thumb on the scale couldn’t be more obvious
Winning New Hampshire ain’t gonna be enough by a long shot. Paul Tsongas won New Hampshire decisively, by 8 points, but the media went along with the soundbite that Bill Clinton was “the comeback kid.” They discounted Tsongas’s win because Tsongas was from Massachusetts, the same problem Sanders has. He’s a local boy, so of course he’ll win there, goes the spin.
Tsongas actually did win nine more primaries and caucuses after his NH win, and the media cast him as a real rival to Clinton. Pretty exciting campaign for about three weeks.
This media is not going to do that. If Sanders can’t win some states right after NH (and he can’t), if he doesn’t drop out then his effort will become just a sort of boutique campaign for lefties. If Sanders wants those lefties to support Clinton in the general election, and I think he does, he’ll drop out and start working to get her elected.
Tsongas went from down 34-9 to 34-27. It is a myth that he got no bounce out of New Hampshire.
Out on the left coast where POTUS primaries for several decades didn’t count, it was a complete mystery as to why Tsongas was running. Why was a one term Senator that retired in 1984 for health reasons in the race? There were concerns/questions that he wasn’t being honest about his physical condition which turned out to be quite legitimate as he wouldn’t have lasted one term if he’d been elected.
Incorrect. I knew Tsongas (not well, I admit). Tsongas actually ran on his cancer survival. It was almost the basis of his campaign, that he had faced death and that it had changed him.
He indeed did have a brief recurrence of the lymphoma that fortunately was caught early and gotten rid of immediately. Lots of people accused him of having had the cancer all along (of course if that were the case he would have been dead years before). That’s just bigotry against cancer survivors. He could have hidden that recurrence if he’d wanted because the race was over by then, but he stuck to his guns and continued to tell the truth about it.
His honesty helped me. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago I was never scared, because it was caught extremely early and I remembered Tsongas saying, “If they catch it early they can get it.” (I’m fine now.)
About two years later he became the victim of horrible medical luck. He had survived his original lymphoma due to an expermental bone marrow treatment. Ten years later, however, more and more of those original survivors began to develop a bone marrow disease (the same thing that killed Carl Sagan just a few months earlier, myelodysplasia, I think it’s called). He didn’t survive that. I saw him in DC before he announced that, and it was clear something was wrong. He looked awful. He did keep that disease hidden for a long time, just for privacy. It was years after the campaign, so I don’t fault him for that.
But he died of pneumonia (as did Sagan) after a second bone marrow transplant to try to cure the bone marrow disease. He was still cancer free at the time, and had been for years.
I’m sad to say I’m not that excited by Sanders or Clinton. You know, this primary has left me a bit worried that there are really very few people I can think of who I’d like to actually see running for president.
Maybe Warren. But other than her, is there a bench at all (and she’s not really going to run, so she doesn’t count)?
Here in California we have some solid folks who are up and coming, like John Chiang. But I don’t quite see any of them having what it takes to run for president down the road (let alone be someone I’d be excited to support).
Are there promising folks out there who are working their way up in state-level politics?
To answer your question, no there are very few first rate Democrats working their way up the political ladder. It’s been the Clinton party since 1992 — Barack Obama was their “black swan,” but he chose to stay close to their neoliberalcon public policy orientation and handed control of the party back to them and their associates as soon as he won in 2008. The party can’t begin to change until they’re gone.
In California as long as the Democratic Party can keep control of the state I think we can weather the continuing nonsense in Washington.
I even heard a couple people joking (I think) about seceding if Trump was elected.
I am not worried about the chances of a Trump Presidency. In fact, I am looking forward to how much easier it will be to register and turn out voters if Trump is the GOP nominee. It would be easier to regain our Legislative supermajorities in California; it would also be easier to win our important Proposition campaigns and elect Democrats up and down the State.
Sanders positions are very similar to Warren’s, as has been recognized by the Working Families Party, which tried to get Warren to run a while back, and failing that, has just endorsed Sanders.
http://mic.com/articles/129967/bernie-sanders-just-received-one-of-his-biggest-endorsements-yet#.kXT
EKmPiR
As for not being excited by Sanders, maybe the mote is in your own eye. He just set a new record for the number of individual contributions received at this point during a presidential campaign — 2.3 million and counting.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-campaign-contributions_5678356ce4b06fa6887e03c5
It looks like Bernie would have done better had Biden got in. Once Biden made it clear he wasn’t running, all his votes in Iowa went to Hillary. No shocker there. The result though is that, according to the polls, his only shot is turnout. Anyone know if Hillary has run ads in Iowa, and how much was spent? And compare that to Bernie.
I can tell you in New Hampshire they are both on the air.
Clinton is on the air A LOT.
I don’t believe he has any real chance. I never have. Nevertheless, I hope he does well and keeps his campaign alive as long as possible. He’s doing a fantastic job of bringing up important topics and ensuring that Hillary can’t move more to the center. He doesn’t have to win for us to be in his debt.
Like they say- talk is cheap. Obama did a 180 once he locked up the primaries on a number of issues. Hillary won’t be any different. Actually, given her past record and and considering how terrible the Republican nominee is going to be. I think she might end up being even worse. As long as she doesn’t offend the key interest groups, she will be able to run to the right by a mile and still trot out the “who are you going to vote for, me or that crazy guy…” to Democrats as she desperately courts the know-nothing voter block and grabs for the wall street cash.
Bernie, on the other hand won’t change his message win or lose- which of course will be yet another reason why the chattering class will dismiss him.
Isn’t not offending the key interest groups the entire point? I’m a member of interest groups fighting for reproductive rights, civil rights, justice for black people, Latinos, LGBTQs, and immigrants, education opportunities, health access, help for the poor, etc. As long as she continues to support those groups, I will vote for her happily over any crazy guy the GOP can come up with. Will she be less supportive after the primary? Maybe. But that’s exactly why I want Bernie around as long as possible.
I agree that talk is cheap. In this vein, I ask for an accounting of the “number of issues” that Obama “did a 180” on after winning the 2008 primary. And, in that accounting, please consider excluding issues such as the closure of the Guantanamo detention facility and immigration policy reform, where Obama expended political capital to achieve his promise but was opposed by Congress and the courts.
I’ll get us started. I agree that Obama did not expend much political capital in our failed attempt to get the Employee Free Choice Act passed. I wouldn’t claim that he “did a 180” on the issue, though; he remained supportive of EFCA after becoming President.
Are you kidding? He (and ALL the Dems) dropped EFCA like a hot potato after the election. Also kept on saying that he wanted Healthcare for ALL Americans, not Healthcare for some Americans and mandatory insurance for the rest.
The claim about EFCA here is way overstated. Accurate histories of EFCA actions during the 111th Congress are well summarized here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_Free_Choice_Act
“On March 10, 2009, the bill was introduced in the 111th Congress by Sen. Kennedy (Democrat of Massachusetts) and Rep. George Miller (Democrat of California). Kennedy described the bill as “a critical step toward putting our economy back on track,” while Miller also put the bill in the context of the 2008 economic crisis, declaring, “If we want a fair and sustainable recovery from this economic crisis, we must give workers the ability to stand up for themselves and once again share in the prosperity they help to create.”
Although only 41 senators were Republicans, Senators Ben Nelson (Democrat of Nebraska) and Arlen Specter (Democrat of Pennsylvania) announced that they did not support the bill in March 2009. In addition, Blanche Lincoln (Democratic senator for Arkansas) and Tom Carper (Democratic senator for Delaware) both stated in April that they would not vote for EFCA in its current form.
Dianne Feinstein (Democratic senator for California) has also announced that she would prefer to seek alternative legislation. Sen. Claire McCaskill indicated in a meeting with the Missouri Chamber of Commerce that it is unlikely that EFCA would pass in its current incarnation.
On July 7, 2009, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) chose the bill as the first piece of legislation that he would co-sponsor, joining 40 other Democratic senators.
On July 16, 2009, reports were made that Senate advocates proposed dropping the provisions removing the employer’s right to demand an extra ballot.
On July 17, 2009, the New York Times reported that in an effort to secure a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, a group of key Democratic senators are planning to change the proposed legislation to remove the “card check” provision of the EFCA, which would have allowed unions to be certified solely by majority sign-up.”
So, we see here that EFCA was at least six Democratic Senate votes short, since it was 100% certain that the Republicans would vote to prevent cloture. President Obama failed to expend much political capital on this and deserves criticism on that basis, but it does not at all fit the definition of a 180 degree turn or a broken campaign promise by Obama.
EFCA is more an indication that Obama simply refuses to do hopeless quixotic crusades. There were a number of Dem Senators who had supported EFCA but flipflopped when the bill was actually in the Senate (e.g. Lincoln). They 180’d and they were lying. But, given that they were actually in the Senate, the chance of getting all of them to support it was precisely zero (and weren’t there some who had publicly opposed it before as well?). There was nothing Obama could possibly have done.
So, given that, he skipped it and moved on. Perhaps the world would be a better place if he’d spent more time ineffectually haranguing Lincoln and less on, say, choosing appointees, but he’s just not that kind of guy. It wasn’t a 180 on his part, just triage.
Here’s an independent summary of what the 2008 Obama campaign ran on re. health care policy:
https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/obama_campaign_position_on_health_care.pd
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Name the campaign promises the President broke through his own actions. Passing a single payer health care program was not a campaign plank of the Obama campaign.
Obama spent tons of political capital in order to get the best ACA bill possible through Congress.
renegotiate NAFTA comes to mind.
Yes, like passing TPP then fixing it.
No mandate on the health care coverage. That did not last long…
“ensuring that Hillary can’t move more to the center”
???? She’s already Center-Right, how does Sanders stop her from moving Left?
nobody ever has to stop her from moving left. It would absolutely never occur to her or her advisors to do it.
That’s simply not true. She started off with a campaign distinctly left of Obama’s or any Dem nominee since at least Carter. When’s the last time some Dem nominee pushed to give employees partial ownership of the corporations they worked for? Sander’s campaign has actually had the reverse effect of what was expected – she’s moved back to the right on a few issues to make a sharper distinction with Sanders.
Employees have always been able to buy stock. Another 401K rip-off. Or are you saying she would force private businesses to offer buy-ins. lol
The Dem candidate from a state that shares a border with NH always wins in NH. The only exception was when incumbent Dem Pres. Carter ran against NH neighbor Ted Kennedy. When no incumbent Dem is running, NH always votes for the candidate from a neighboring state. It voted for Kerry (MA), Dukakis (MA), Tsongas (MA), Muskie (ME), JFK (MA). And it will vote for Sanders (VT). It won’t mean a thing. Sanders has no chance of winning the nomination. He’s not a good enough candidate.
Disagree. He won’t win because the fix is in.
then he should just fold up and go home now
Sometimes you fight lost causes. I believe that that is his motivation.
he was never going to win, not because of some conspiracy but because he doesn’t have a large enough base of support in the Democratic party.
He’s not in the same position as the President in 2008 who was able to split the establishment or at least hold them at bay early to make the point that he was a legit candidate.
He was never going to win and he knew that when the campaign started.
So we should all join the coronation train?
no but acting like it’s a even fight is kinda silly, fight the fight you’re fighting instead of the one you’d hope you would be fighting.
Mainstream Democrats don’t think Sanders can win, and I’m not talking about the politicians in the party but the actual base of the party.
You want to change their mind, then you have to win and you’ll have to win someplace that he doesn’t have home field advantage. He’ll have to win in NV or SC to turn the tide.
I never understood the bandwagon effect which is voters in a secret ballot voting for the person they think others are voting for instead of the person they prefer.
Asch experiments in conformity. Have been concerned that the recent increase in pre-election polling is facilitated a conformity effect.
People want to vote for a winner and right now Clinton looks like a winner. Plus the differences in policy are relatively minor so there’s no pain in voting for Clinton over Sanders from a policy point of view.
???? I’m dumfounded. the differences in policy are HUGE. Vote for HRC and you are voting for R-lite. Might as well vote for Bush. You’ll get the same foreign and domestic policy.
policy positions aren’t that big if you actually look at what each one is running on
You might not like her but she’s running to the left of the President and as the natural successor to his policies. That’s what a lot of people want.
I’m really undecided at this point but hair on fire reactions push me away from either one of them at this point.
The lifelong track record and character are far more telling than current campaign rhetoric. The latter should be especially suspect when it is inconsistent with the former.
Yes, “watch what I do, not what I say” and “talk is cheap”.
Why is that so difficult for people to understand?
Beyond the ludicrousness of impeaching a POTUS for an extra-marital sexual dalliance (or lying about having done so in a depo which most people in a similar situation would have done), what frosted me the most was that people acted so shocked and outraged that he would do such a thing. (Including Hillary which may have been the first time I found her disgusting.) The public knew in 1992 that he was a philanderer and more people voted for him than his opponents.
“(or lying about having done so in a depo which most people in a similar situation would have done)”
When I was a kid, it was considered the honorable thing to do, to save the girl’s reputation.
To often we don’t consider the Hell this has made of her life, just because she was star struck and trusted the wrong girlfriend.
Actually campaign promises and positions mean a great deal especially at the Presidential level. I saw a study posted on this site at one point that Presidents tend to at least try to do the things they ran on, and at a fairly high rate.
I don’t know what track record you’re pointing to, but her time as Senator and at State aren’t that far left or right of mainstream Democrats, again like I said above not the politicians but actual base voters.
I’m not saying it’s not worth fighting to push the party further left, but you have to fight the fight you’re actually fighting which isn’t to win but to move the party. It’s not good enough to just be right you have to win too. So we need both things to actually get the progress we want to see.
Fighting to win is the only way to push the party further left, as you say.
Whether he can win or not, Sanders voice on the left is all there is this cycle. He’s doing a surprisingly (maybe shockingly) good job of it. Continuing to fight for him to win is essential, I think, if his voice is to continue to be heard. As the only opponent to Clinton, of course, he may be given a brief chance to rise by the media if he wins or comes close in Iowa. Someone here suggested that he would continue at least through Vermont for sentimental reasons; hopefully that’s true. Still, a win in Iowa will change the calculus, if only briefly. So I hope the fighters for Bernie continue to fight as hard as they possibly can. Reversals of fortune happen all the time for reasons no one predicts. Thankfully, Sanders has proved that he’s prepared and well-suited to step up (unlike, say, Howard Dean in 2004) and seize the advantage should the moment arrive. Like the other supporters of Sanders, I hope it does.
If that were the case then only winning would do the trick and if that’s what you’re all pinning your hopes on we’re all screwed.
If you position is discredited because it was 100% based on winning then you’ll end up with the opposite of what you hoped to achieve.
Let’s not lose sight of the bigger picture.
One more item:
Sanders has never been the front runner and has not received the scrutiny a front runner gets. If he ever does get that attention we’ll see if he can sustain a coherent campaign or not. We do not know as of yet if he can.
Sanders has one enormous problem right now: he trails by 60 among African Americans, who about 22% of the total Democratic vote in the primaries.
His favorables are the same as Clinton among Hispanics, and he is tied among whites in South Carolina. But without dramatic improvement among African Americans, he will have trouble getting past Super Tuesday.
A really good question to ask: why did all the liberal states decide to make themselves irrelevant in the primaries. California has over 400 delegates: and it will be a miracle if the race is still competitive when that state votes.
By “the fix is in” do you mean the Democrats are going to vote for the Democrats?
If that’s what you mean I do think you get it.
No, my dear troll. I mean the powers high in the Democratic Party have decided Hillary is their “made man” and no one else will win. That’s why the debates were sidelined and restricted. That’s why a Hillary apparatchik was appointed head of the DNC. That’s why this ratfucking operation of the database.
You really are stark raving aren’t you?
You really don’t seem to have the ability to discern reality from fantasy.
Hope you are being paid well to troll this site.
Probably a twelve year old in love with the power to bully on a blog site and with nothing interesting to contribute. Paid operatives tend to be more sophisticated.
Oh look, you’ve attracted my current stalker as well.
Probably a sock puppet.
Calling a regular contributor here “stark raving mad” and delusional is classic troll behavior. Only made more pathetic by your frequent need to use the troll rating button. What has made you so angry that you need to strike out at others in such a low-rent way?
Sanders can’t win without going negative on Clinton; and he’s not going to do that. He was the only alternative to Clinton’s, but he lacks anything like her power base and name recognition. So, the race was over before it started last spring. Sanders might be worth watching, but there won’t be much to see.
On to 2020. How will a 76 year old President Clinton do for reelection? I assume little will have changed in Congress during the tenure of her first term though expect Democrats will shock the country in 2018 midterms by holding (further) looses in Congress to minimum. Expect a mild recession toward the end of her term as health insurance costs begin spiraling out of control again in a few years and Republicans force further austerity measures. Prospects for those of us looking toward retirement in the 2020s (Gen Xers will begin to retire in force by mid decade). Not much good news for “the struggling” as Clinton calls us, I fear, over the coming years, but that appears not to matter any more. Regardless, her prospects for re-election in 2020 are probably not good; maybe she’ll step aside. At least the Supreme Court won’t get any worse.
The night Reeagan was elected in 1980 I walked across downtown Boston from Fenway triangle to the Common to wait tables for the night. it was snowing lightly, deathly quiet it seemed for an election night. Trying to remember when we gave up hope in that election, I think it was later in the cycle than this time. Probably spring or summer when it was clear Kennedy couldn’t beat Carter for the nomination. My friends and I couldn’t care less about Carter winning after that. Of course, that year it probably wouldn’t have made any difference if a lot of us younger Democrats cared more, but what a loss.
Yes that election victory of Reagan’s opened the gates of hell, you might say. And here are the Democrats now somewhere in the tenth circle or thereabouts with HRC leading the Democratic centripetal impetus to the very bottom: war and poverty.
Tenth Circle Added To Rapidly Growing Hell – Onion, 1998
Pausing to tear off the limbs of an Access Hollywood host, Frigax added, “We’re all tremendously excited about the many brand-new forms of torture and eternal pain this new level’s state-of-the-art facilities will make possible.”
That was funny
re: debate: the “first lady” question really brought home that this is/ would be Clinton II – will that have any impact? I saw only two modes: sleep inducing and angry – she seems to use angry mode to show she isn’t emotionless. also some fear mongering. just awful. I sure hope Sanders has a chance.
The passivity among the blogs about Sanders is VERY strange. I think many are scared of discussing him – there are 10 Trump posts for everyone about Sanders.
WHY? Damned if I know
In Iowa Ann Selzer noted Sanders is right where he needs to be (and Clinton was at 48 in the last DMR poll).
At this point there are two real questions:
1. If Sanders loses Iowa, can he still win New Hampshire? Here is the Pre-Iowa polling in New Hampshire in the 2000 Democratic Race.
Bradley 44.5
Gore 43
Post Iowa NH Polling
Gore 50
Bradley 43
Final Result
Gore 49.7
Bradley 45.6
So Gore got a bounce, which faded in the following week. In general front runners don’t get much of a bounce out of Iowa in New Hampshire. Gore beat Bradley 63-36 – and the size of the win helped. Most people I know in NH will also say that McCain took votes away from Bradley – both relied on independents in NH – and Sanders does as well.
In fact here is a look at the pre and post NH numbers for front runners who won NH
’84 Pre IA: 36.75, Post 37
’96 GOP Pre IA: 24.3, Post IA 24.5
’00 GOP Pre IA: 41.5, Post IA 31.4
The exception is the ’80 Democratic race:
Pre IA: Carter 35, Kennedy 31, Post IA 52, Kennedy 37
2. What is the national bounce if Sanders beats Clinton:
Data below. These are enormous swings, but the McCain Bush example provides a bit of a cautionary tale. The bounce out of NH was big enough to give McCain the lead in South Carolina, and he cut a 40 point lead to 23, but he was still behind.
Here are instances when a front runner was beaten in either NH or IA:
“80 GOP, Pre IA national polling: Reagan 47, Bush 8
Post IA National Polling: Reagan 31, Bush 28.6
’84 DEM
Pre NH: Mondale 40, Hart 3
Post NH: Mondale 33, Hart 34
’88 Dukakis 14, Jackson 17
Post NH: Dukakis 21, Jackson 24
’92
Clinton 32, Tsongas 9
Clinton 34, Tsognas 27
’00
Pre NH: Bush 60, McCain 24
Post NH Bush 53, McCain 30
’04
Pre IA
Dean 22.6, Kerry 8.6
Post NH
Kerry 46 Dean 10
’08
Pre IA: Clinton 48, Obama 27
Post IA: Clinton 33, Obama 31
’12
Romney 27, Santorum 3
Post IA National
Romney 27, Santorum 16
Forgot about Dole and Buchanan:
Dole 45.6
Buchanan 6
Post NH
Dole 38
Buchanan 24
Average Change for Challenger who beats the front runner: +19
Average decline for front runner: -9
RCP Average:
Clinton 56, Sanders 30
Project National If Sanders wins New Hampshire based on data above:
Sanders 49, Clinton 47
Fear of retribution by HRC.
that’s fairly ridiculous, what does she care what people post of blogs
I think it’s more likely that no one takes Sanders seriously. I know I don’t
He/she that is leading in the polls shall get the largest amount of time to speak?
Politico
(Still looking for the time allowed each of the candidates for the entire debate. Perhaps it was less unequal than in the first part. Although I would toss out the time given to Sanders and MOM when Clinton wasn’t present.)
I was truly surprised about how angry I became when Debbie Wasserman-Shultz pulled that stunt to hold Bernie Sanders’ own data hostage because of an incompetent data company hired by the DNC itself especially after the DNC did not respond last October to reported firewall problems by the Sanders campaign. Of course the Booman Tribune was busy talking about the Trump- Putin bromance and the Spaghetti Monster instead of the melt down occurring inside the Democratic Party so I turned to TPM to learn what had happened. For my first time I sent a comment to Josh Marshal:
“I was too young to vote for JFK or LBJ but have voted for Democrats ever since. Today by cutting off access to Bernie Sanders own data, I’m through with the DNC and the Democratic Party. I blame Obama and Hillary most of all for installing Hillary’s 2008 co-chair as head of the DNC while Hillary was or about to be an active candidate. I was already angry with Debbie Wasserman-Shultz trying to tilt the election toward Hillary by limiting the number of debates to six instead of the twenty six as held in 2008. As a result of these unfair actions after the primaries I will refuse to vote for any Democrat while Debbie Wasserman-Shultz is in any leadership position in the DNC. Unless Hillary can use her influence with her former co-chair to reverse this action I cannot bring myself to participate in the DNC coronation of Hillary in the general election.”
In a later article Josh Marshal warns, “If Sanders supporters get the idea the DNC and its chair are doing the latter [tipping the scales in Hillary’s favor], it introduces a toxic chemical into the bloodstream of the party. That could cause big, big problems down the line for Clinton and for the entire Democratic ticket.”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/some-big-picture-thoughts-on-the-sanders-dnc-derp-war
This gets even worse. RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, one of Bernie Sanders’ biggest union supporters has called on him “to consider running as an independent candidate if Democratic Party leaders continue to refuse to give him access to his campaign’s voter records.”
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/12/head-of-first-union-to-endorse-bernie-sanders-suggests-third-party-r
un-how-can-he-be-loyal/
At the Booman Tribune in an earlier response to these issues a commenter wrote he could never vote for Hillary because he can’t stand cheats. I thought at the time this might be overstating things but after Hillary’s response to this latest stunt I have arrived at that same point of view. Frequent labels for Hillary are `liar’ and `untrustworthy’ with Debbie Wasserman-Shultz now adding `cheat’ to the mix.
Bernie’s campaign was mostly silent about the bad timing and reduced debate schedules by Hillary’s DNC operative putting her thumb on the scales but this latest heavy handed action of DWS has once again placed these issues front and center. Bernie now gets his voter data back but the Clinton campaign can’t unring that bell. The only real solution available to Hillary not lose to Trump if nominated is to let go of her control of the DNC by immediately firing Debbie Wasserman-Shultz. Let neutrality return to the DNC before it’s too late.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miles-mogulescu/fire-debbie-wasserman-sch_b_8841576.html
Since 1992 there has been no neutrality at the DNC except for the four years from 2005-2008, and that only came about because of the fury of DEM activists that finally woke up to the fact that Democrats had been losing or treading water in elections for a decade.
While Democrats applauded the 2006 and 2008 election results that concession appeared to have facilitated, we’re not on the inside looking out. It screwed up the agenda of the party controlling personalities which has been “two terms for Bill, then two terms for Hill” (Jones and the blue dress mucked up the time-line for that). No way are they going to take any chance that real Democrats will interfere with their aspirations again.
“Since 1992 there has been no neutrality at the DNC except for the four years from 2005-2008.” When Obama took office the Blue Dogs came back to life just in time to lose both houses of congress. I lay this at the feet of Obama, the Democratic Establishment and the DNC.
For the Blue Dogs to continue Hillary must succeed Obama. They must have thought it a real cleaver idea to install Hillary’s 2008 campaign co-chair to capture the DNC. While the Democratic Establishment certainly supported this, it could backfire badly because we have a candidate generating even more grassroots support than Obama even after the Bush disaster. Obama reached 1 million contributions by the time primary voting started while Bernie has already received 2 million contributions. Obama’s poll numbers were about the same or worse against the Hillary machine than Bernie at this same point.
If everything is fair after a thorough debate of issues and we find the Democrats are not ready for the changes Bernie is proposing it would be easy to hold ones nose and vote for Hillary in the general. Hillary making the DNC an arm of her campaign is almost as big a blunder for Democrats as her vote for the Iraq war. Regardless of what was done in the past, fairness is everything in the Democratic primaries.
I wanted to share my feeling about this because I think others may feel the same way. When Debbie Wasserman-Shultz decided to use her DNC position to ratfuck the Bernie campaign I was so angry that that I, for the first time ever, would say I could not only never voter for Hillary but also I could never vote for any down ticket DNC sanctioned Democrat. If this is the way Hillary Democrats want to operate, I’m through with them.
Bernie apologized not only to Hillary but also to his own supporters after that incompetent DNC vendor let the firewall down once again and some (now fired) Bernie staffers took a look. It’s now up to Hillary to correct her mistake by firing Debbie Wasserman Shultz. The ball is in her court.
I think this is worth considering, from someone who knows about the type of voter file the DNC is using:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2015/12/poisoning-well-helps-no-one-by.html
Incompetent vendor or not, no one made the Sanders data and IT team purposely look up their rival candidates proprietary data.
If the DNC, Sander Campaign, and Clinton Campaign data were in a room in 3 separate filing cabinets with a outside vendor assigned to hold the keys to the cabinets to make sure that one group didn’t look at another groups data in that groups cabinet where in the vendor screws up and unlocks all the cabinets from time to time, it’s still unethical for the Sanders team to ever go looking in the Clinton cabinets (and vice versa) even if the vendor is completely incompetent.
You can talk about temptation all you want, but if you’re labeling the Clinton Campaign and the DNC as cheats because a vender screwed up and the Sanders data and IT team gave into temptation and cheated by looking at the Clinton data and the made the equivalent to photo copies, you’re not living in any kind of discernible reality that I can see.
Yeah, D.W.S. is an awful person who does most likely have her thumb on the scales. And that’s bad. But that is a separate issue that is an attempt to distract that the Sanders data and IT team go their hands caught in the other team’s cookie jar.
And worse for your knee-jerk “Clinton is Evil” reaction is that even Bernie Sanders knows his team fucked up. That’s why the very principled and rigid ideological man apologized to Hillery Clinton personally on the debate stage. Hillery and D.W.S. could be the literal spawn of Satan but that doesn’t make it legal or ethical to commit ‘illegal data trespass’ by giving into temptation. And if the Sanders Campaign wants to run as the ‘Good Guys’ then they actually have to be the good guys and do what Sen. Sanders did and apologize for giving into temptation.
Sen. Sanders earned major points in my book for his personal handling of this matter. His PR, data, and IT teams were just stupid. If you’re going to copy someone else’s notes, at least don’t get caught doing it! And after you get caught, don’t lie about it. And the data and IT team got caught, and the PR team lied about it. That Sen. Sanders when he found out about it then fired the people directly involved, and personally apologized for the actions of his people shows accountability and that the ‘Buck Stops Here’ leadership, especially as every President and Presidential Candidate are going to have people who eventually screw up.
Last October a contractor working for the Bernie Campaign discovered problems with the DNC vendor’s firewall because a search also downloaded campaign data from another candidate. The contractor contacted the Bernie campaign to report what had happened. The Bernie campaign told the contractor to isolate and protect the data as they called the DNC to report the problem because they worried rightly that others might have access to Bernie’s data. The DNC assured Bernie’s campaign the problem was fixed while Bernie’s campaign continued to monitor the database because this is a serious data security issue.
A couple of months later Bernie’s campaign discovered that once again the firewall controlled by that incompetent DNC vendor was down. Some Bernie staffers decided to take a look at some data while the firewall was down and were immediately fired for that decision. You are correct that Bernie Sanders deserves credit for his handling of this situation.
Debbie Wasserman-Shultz smelled blood going on CNN to declare that the Sanders campaign was refusing to cooperate to give information about who had access and what if anything was taken. This was complete lie. Not only had the DNC been contacted, the Bernie campaign had already fired the staffer and was conducting an investigation to determine who else was involved. This could have been handled out of the public view with the database problem fixed and all data secured but that did not happen.
Debbie Wasserman-Shultz then suspended access to the Sanders campaign’s own data then went on CNN to accuse Bernie Sanders of being a house thief in the night who had found an unlocked door. The Sanders campaign then filed a lawsuit in federal court against the DNC to get its own data restored. The DNC agreed to restore access to Bernie’s data just before they were about to go in front of a federal judge to learn just how thin the ice was where Debbie Wasserman-Shultz had led the DNC. This is the first time a major candidate has had to sue the DNC.
The issue here is not the data or the vendor but Debbie Wasserman-Shultz while head of the DNC was trying to ratfuck a Democratic candidate who is in a statistical tie in early voting states with her preferred candidate. Debbie admitted on CNN that she did not understand the technical issues involved in her suspension order. The database keeps records of who access the database and what they take. She could have simply asked her own vendor for what she wanted to know. Debbie Wasserman-Shultz decided to go another way and should resign or be fired for that decision.
Would you kindly refrain from “troll” rating my comments. Respond in a comment if you strongly disagree. If it’s not worth the effort to respond, then move along like most of us here do.
If someone is trolling, then you mark them as a troll and don’t respond further because the first rule of dealing with a troll is “Don’t Feed the Troll(s)!”
If you are trolling I’ll mark you or anyone else as trolling.
As I said in a recent post:
Pardon me — is this your blog? Your rules? Your definitions?
Most contributors here share their perspectives, opinions, facts, and knowledge. Sometimes well phrased and sometimes awkwardly or poorly phrased — sort of normal for human discourse. Doubt that any of us expect many others to agree with any of that on a regular basis. But none of us are trolling or looking to incite negative emotional responses.
What makes an opinion such as ‘I hate Clinton’ “left-wing-paranoia?” It’s my understanding that such expressions are common on right-wing sites; so, it does seem to fail the “left-wing” test. Were liberals ‘paranoid’ a few years ago many frequently said, ‘I hate George Bush?’
Your tolerance for those that disagree with you seems to be on the low side and you can’t resist the impulse to slap the cheapest of all shots with a troll rating. Grow up.
Okay, well reading comprehension is obviously not your strong suit right now. It explicitly says left-wing-nut, not left-wing. And left-wing-nut paranoia is listed as a separate thing from ‘I hate Clinton’ posts.
I don’t troll rate people for disagreeing with me. I troll rate people for posting inflammatory, extraneous, derogatory, and/or off topic messages in an online community with the deliberate intent to incite an emotional response in the reader.
Posting about how anyone who’s ever talked to a Clinton (only slightly hyperbolic), worked for a Clinton, campaigned for a Clinton, or doesn’t agree that both Clintons are the spawn of Satan is automatically untrustworthy and/or evil and/or also the spawn of Satan is inflammatory and derogatory while also likely being extraneous and/or off topic to the conversation taking place while deliberately intending to provoke an emotional response. That last can be directly inferred because ranting like that is sure as hell not meant to provoke a rational response.
Talking about hating George Bush if it falls into those same kind of behavior is also trolling if intended seriously. But amusingly enough, most people here don’t do that.
Left-wing-nut paranoia is things like calling a computer glitch that the Sanders data and IT team uses to illegally and unethically access their competitors data a ‘ratfuck.’ When that paranoia starts bleeding over into calling anyone who doesn’t agree that it’s a ‘ratfuck’ out for being part of the DNC Uni-party conspiracy it’s inflammatory and derogatory while also likely being extraneous and/or off topic to the conversation taking place while deliberately intending to provoke an emotional response. That means it’s trolling. It’s certainly not intended to provoke rational conversation.
Nor is this your blog with your rules. If Booman has a problem with my understanding of the word trolling, then he can take it up with me in what ever way he see’s fit in pretty much any way he see’s fit. This site is his sole personal property. It’s neither mine nor yours. And I’d thank you to remember that.
I am only a mere human being who has only my own knowledge base of what words mean, and what those words mean when strung into a sentence. If you or Booman want me to use a different definition of what ‘trolling’ means other than one right out of a dictionary, then it would be appreciative to post so before calling someone out for having the audacious nerve and unmitigated gall to rely upon a dictionary for the meaning of a word.
A key defining feature of civilization is the ability to communicate via common language. If you want me to talk in a different language here then perhaps you could provide me with a Marie3 approved dictionary so that I might now have to stumble through the indignities of offending you by using the English Language as the rest of the English speaking human civilization does.
You can comment on me here all you want and as long as Booman allows. But please don’t tell me that you’re some kind of saint to never posts things “looking to incite negative emotional responses.” You know damn well that’s a lie. Any time you insult someone you’re intending to ‘incite negative emotional responses’ as that’s the whole point of insulting someone.
Marie’s been a respected commenter on this blog for a long time now. Who are you? Welcome to the Pond — but did somebody die and put you in charge?
No one. But I’m pretty sure that no one made you Owner either.
I am just me. I’m a person operating within the bounds of reality as I understand it.
But are you seriously going to try and bring out that particular logical fallacy that just because she’s a long time member of the community that she must be right or above reproach from someone who’s not been here long? That because I’m ‘new’ (been reading and occasionally commenting around here since at least Feb. of 2014. Though I did take a multi month break due to health reasons in the later half of 2014.) that I am incapable of having a point?
And curiously nobody is even trying to refute points I made on the definition of words. No one’s attacking my points on the merits; there is just a bunch of rules lawyering and ‘situational definitions’ being brought up as to why I must be wrong on the definitions of words. Never mind that the definition of troll I’m using is only different from the one pointed out in the Booman Tribune FAQ on what a troll is by one cause and that’s that and adding derogatory to the list.
But hell Marie3 can’t even be bothered to notice that much before accusing me of just making things up and using an inappropriate definition of trolling while calling me a child, which is clearly intended as an insult, but protesting that no one around here intends to invoke a negative emotional response, while the whole point of insults are to invoke an emotional response!
But I’m supposed to be the bad guy because I notice the inherent logical inconsistencies in that statement that you feel the need to White Knight in here?
Are you really trying to say that being a member of the community for a long time means that I’m wrong for trying to use words as actually defined? Cause I really don’t understand that from a rational or logical perspective.
AustinSax, What you identify is the Democratic Party Machine, the Clinton Machine at the core. The Democratic Party is controlled by a clique, network cabal, whatever, represented by Bill and Hillary Clinton. This is not a conspiracy theory. The appointment of DWS as head of the DNC proves that it’s a fact. She conspired to ratfuck Bernie Sanders. But her actions do not constitute a conspiracy. Her actions are a fact. She publicly tried to delegimatize Sanders by impugning his honesty. She lied by omission: the Sanders campaign had earlier reported the hole in the data system. She shows the same mentality as another Democratic Party machine operative, Rahm Emanuel, who concealed the video implicating the police in order to get reelected mayor of Chicago. I’d be surprised if this is the end of the story. Hillary Clinton’s campaign cockup of 2008 keeps resonating. She needs Sanders’ ‘people’ to defeat the Republican candidate. Her cockiness and arrogance will be her undoing, for sure. Good riddance. Too bad for all peoples of the world. She might look back wistfully in her memoires, ‘War is the Force you may have had.’
True, this is not a conspiracy theory or as Hillary might put it, “a vast left wing conspiracy.”
I have been quite frustrated with this `progressive’ blog for concentrating on the Republican melt down while ignoring an even deeper crisis inside the Democratic Party. It takes more than just now to come around to “Bernie is someone we who still bears watching” after declaring we will wait until Bernie wins before we can get behind him. What we truly have is a Rahm Emanuel style machine against a true progressive. The differences are vast and with all our punditry we completely ignore those differences. The goal for the machine has been to make Bernie appear the same as Hillary so we would get behind the candidate supported by the Democratic Establishment. This is the first time in my life a real choice was even possible inside the Democratic Party plus we are in a contested primary. As progressive pundits we should take those differences to ground in the most complete way possible because that effort can help others win people over to support Bernie or not. This is supposed to be a market place of ideas.
You are correct that the Clinton Machine is at the center of the Democratic Party being revealed by that idiot Debbie in her ham handed way trying to ratfuck Bernie. That Clinton Machine was in full force when Obama took office, just look at the first administration; Clinton SOS, Rahm Emanuel, Wall Street insiders, Blue Dogs and even some outright Republicans. This was straight up Clinton DLC. Net result of this was the loss of both houses of congress with the Republicans making that as close to permanent as they ever have managed before. More of the same is just going to make things worse as the Republicans continue to take over everything.
The only way for the Democratic Party not only to survive but to gain back power is to defeat the Clinton Machine. That is the entire reason we need Bernie’s political revolution. Once this happens the Democrats will once again become the Party of the People and the Republicans will return to the status of where they belong, as a fringe nightmare.
I truly hope that it doesn’t take the failure of another Clinton presidency to once and for all finally defeat the Clinton Machine.
As you might have noticed, even expressing such a viewpoint here often results in a troll rating by a couple a users who have assigned themselves the task of trashing those not in line with the DNC and looking like “left-wing paranoid conspiracy” freaks by their personal definition of such.
Austin Sax, Dibgy Hullabaloo is just as bad. She obsesses about how ‘awful’ Republicans are while very discreetly swooning about how great it will be see a woman as president in her lifetime, the gender card HRC flogs the world with: Bernie Sanders just doesn’t exist.
Either Hillary or Bernie would soundly defeat Trump in a general election matchup. The Donald and his Republican opponents are writing campaign ad after campaign ad and providing a substantial portion of the direct voter contact conversation for the Clinton or Sanders campaign.
Do you really believe that in the fall of 2016 a meaningful amount of voters are going to be thinking about the actions of the DNC for a 48-hour period in December 2015 in the wake of the firing of the Sanders campaign’s data director for improperly accessing voter information from the Clinton campaign?
More directly: in the fall of 2016 will you really be withholding your vote from Clinton because of the actions of the DNC for a 48-hour period in December 2015 in the wake of the firing of the Sanders campaign’s data director for improperly accessing voter information from the Clinton campaign?
I’m a Sanders supporter. The Sanders campaign, like the Obama campaign in 2008, rises and falls on its own strength and the views of Democratic Party primary voters. There was whining in ’07-’08 about the DNC putting its fingers on the scales for Hillary. Fortunately, little of it came from the Obama campaign itself. So far, Bernie and the Sanders campaign has largely avoided this whining as well.
It was proper for the Sanders campaign to publicly push the DNC to allow them to regain access to the voter information they had gained and stored in the DNC database; that happened promptly. But, especially in the face of that, it would be delusional for the Sanders campaign and Sanders supporters to claim that the outcome of the 2016 Democratic Party POTUS primaries is at all controlled by the actions of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.
The DNC doesn’t have the power you believe it does.
No, but it forms a pattern. HRC right now has a, what, 45% trustworthy rating? If she had a good or even an average rating, then it’d blow off but a narrative of ‘HRC manipulates the party to get what she wants’ ain’t going to make that any better.
Also:
Democrats tanked the youth between 2008 and 2012. It tanked by raw turnout percentage in all races and it tanked by Obana vote % for white Millenials and black male Millenials. The only category where 2012 Obama did better with the <30 set was with black female youth, where he improved a not-insigificant 3%.
This election is totally not in the bag if it’s HRC versus Trump. Remember that Obama Coalition? Yeah, that thing the establishment wing parades around while crowing ‘demographics are destiny!’? The Obama Coalition is a thing that does not exist without the youth voting gap. Without the youth of the Obama Coalition, national elections will look like 2000-2004, not 2012.
As an aside: I grow so weary of people responding to generalized arguments as if my or my fellow posters’ personal behavior had an effect on the description of the trend. Like, just ignore the ecology, scolding or shaming one member of the set relieves you of your responsibility to examine the rest of the population.
Look, here’s the balm: HRC will get my grudging vote and a perfunctory donation, but I don’t control the minds of millions of voters in my demographic. And unless HRC’s plan is to go on TV and scold everyone like you just did, you should be focusing on the trend rather than the heralds of the trend.
I’m amused by an electoral argument which infers that Hillary could lose to Trump because voters find her untrustworthy. What, we don’t think the campaign will expose Trump as preposterously untrustworthy in ways that were persuasive to the general electorate?
And how does the responsibility for DNC actions land on Hillary? Hillary can’t fire Debbie Wasserman-Schultz as Chair of the DNC. She serves at the pleasure of the Committee.
Most importantly, the DNC is not and never has been capable of deciding who the Party’s POTUS nominee will be. The voters will and do decide. I do not believe voters care about how many debates are held, or the short-term response of the DNC to an improper taking of campaign voter information by one of the other campaigns, or even the endorsements of individual members of the Committee.
“Without the youth of the Obama Coalition, national elections will look like 2000-2004, not 2012.”
This claim and its inference appear off to me. The non-white and single women percentages of the electorate, the other prominent portions of the coalition which elected Obama, have grown from where they were at the beginning of the century. The repellent views of the eventual Republican candidate will help increase turnout for the Dem candidate from non-white and single women voters; a Trump candidacy would really jack them up. And we see each of the Democratic candidates, Hillary included, attending to these constituencies in their campaigns. The Dem nominee will need a decent youth vote, but does not need to restore the youth vote to 2008 levels to win.
I’m also seeing recent polls showing Hillary winning the youth vote in matchups with the most likely GOP POTUS nominees. Claims that Hillary will do poorly with younger voters are presumptive.
Everyone knows I’m not trustworthy but just look at the other guy who is even more untrustworthy, so vote for me. How long will it take to learn that this is the approach that has put a Republican majority in both houses of congress and now you want to use this to keep the White House? This is the way it works; both sides are corrupt so why bother to get involved or vote? Voter turnout remains a central problem for Democrats.
“And how does the responsibility for DNC actions land on Hillary? Hillary can’t fire Debbie Wasserman-Schultz as Chair of the DNC.”
Debbie Wasserman-Shultz was Hillary’s 2008 campaign co-chair, an official in that Hillary campaign. Hillary could simply call up and say, “Great Job Debbie but you got a little too out front with this one and run the risk of alienating people I’m going to need in the general so I would appreciate it if you resigned.” Obama as head of the Democratic Party was flying his true flag when he chose Debbie for this position and could probably care less.
“Most importantly, the DNC is not and never has been capable of deciding who the Party’s POTUS nominee will be.”
The DNC can never decide but it can and did push things in a Hillary direction. The first goal is to protect Hillary’s superior name recognition by limiting how many voters Bernie can reach hence the decision to limit the number of debates and place those debates on dates and times to reach as few people as possible. With the debates now limited it is now easier for the corporatist media to steer questions away from Bernie’s issues that resonate with the public as was done in the last debate.
Now we have the latest ratfuck incident where Debbie goes on CNN to accuse Bernie of being no better than a common house thief. Debbie manages to shift the focus of real issues plus cripple the Bernie campaign for two days during a critical time in the primary by withholding their own data. Is that enough for you?
“I’m also seeing recent polls showing Hillary winning the youth vote in matchups with the most likely GOP POTUS nominees.”
How about Bernie’s youth vote matchup with the most likely GOP POTUS nominees? These are the voters you should worry about. Its one thing to try but lose on a level playing field but to lose because you think the election is rigged just like the economy is another thing.
For those of you who think Bernie has pushed Hillary to the left, I ask you to watch this issue to determine if Hillary will do and say anything to get elected or if she does the right thing to demonstrate she’s not quite that vicious. I’m waiting. Should she win the nomination, my vote or lack of vote depends on what she does now.
I haven’t commented on this because it was just so apparent that I presumed that it would remain a part of the factual record that we would agree upon, but one thing is missing from most of the DNC bashing here: There was a big fuck-up in the Sanders campaign. It’s important for us to keep in mind what caused the blow-up here. Bernie didn’t apologize for nothing.
The “factual record” isn’t yet clear at all. The system vendor has taken responsibility for having applied a patch with a “bug” that allowed all users to see the private data entered by the various campaigns that remained live for some number of hours. The vendor has claimed that the private data couldn’t be exported, saved, or printed. The vendor has also claimed that only one Sanders’ user did multiple queries in the last thirty to forty minutes while the “bug” was live and saved logs of those queries in a folder on the system.
Sanders’ had no choice within the limited time constraints available to do other than fire Uretsky and suspend two other employees. Sort of like Obama firing Shirley Sherrod.
Why did the DNC lock out the Sanders’ campaign after the “bug” was fixed? Who was the anonymous source that ran to the media with accusations that weren’t verified? Why did DWS go public and double down on accusations that by then the system vendor had refuted?
Tech people (admittedly not privy to the architecture, etc. of the DNC voter system) that have been commenting on this don’t agree on much and for the most part are perplexed about the whole thing, in part because if one couldn’t export, save, or print any of the exposed private data, what could Uretsky have obtained. These techies but do seem to take it as a given that Uretsky did a bad thing, but I haven’t seen them state how they conclude nefarious intent/actions from the limited disclosures. Atrios and Adam B, who have been around a long time and have credibility with me, have personally known Uretsky for years and vouch for him as a stand up and honest guy. So, for me, it remains quite possible that Uretsky was attempting to document a system failure and has been made a scapegoat. That’s not to say that I reject the possibility that Uretsky is “guilty as charged;” only that a case for that hasn’t been made public. And may never be as the system vendor and DNC have an interest limiting how much they disclose about the system and the Sanders’ campaign is dependent on the system to function and therefore, isn’t currently in a position to push further on this.
Thank you for this Marie.
Bernie owes it to Uretsky, his staff and his supporters to demand and make public the relevant details of an outside audit about the security breach of this vendor’s software regardless if the DNC or the vendor likes it or not.
“The vendor has claimed that the private data couldn’t be exported, saved, or printed.”
If we learn that to be true by an outside audit, the DNC and Hillary need to review all the recent statements made about Bernie by Debbie Wasserman-Shultz on CNN and MSNBC. This should be the final nail in the Debbie Wasserman-Shultz DNC Chair coffin or they should be forced to explain publicly why not.
Uretsky, IMHO, did make one mistake and that was to appear on camera to tell his side of the story. A natural impulse for someone that believes they’re innocent of accusations being made against one. However, one’s belief or interpretation isn’t enough if one isn’t highly skilled in public presentations and hasn’t taken the time to gain adequate command of the facts or is not at liberty to disclose all the facts that make one’s narrative coherent.
I’m reminded of the ACORN and PP stings. The targets didn’t acquit themselves very well in early questioning after the doctored videos were made public even though they are completely innocent of any wrongdoing. Congress, including most Democrats, cut off funding for ACORN and was destroyed before the truth came out. If not for Cecile Richards, PP could easily have been destroyed as well.
Sanders’ seems to be doing the right thing so far as his campaign’s lawsuit hasn’t been withdrawn. It’s the only too he has to get to the bottom on this, but we know that audits don’t produce quick reports and lawsuits take much longer. So, we won’t see or hear anything from those actions until it no longer matters.
For the most part it’s called ‘Illegal Data Trespass.’ That that means that you voluntarily when looking for data that didn’t belong to you in a database that does not belong to you or is not open to the public. It get’s worse if you saved copies of what that data was.
It’s a purely statutory crime, no intent is required for conviction. It’s much the same way if one enters a house with out permission, one has still committed a crime regardless of the state of the lock on the door.
Legally, the DNC, Clinton, and Sanders data are all considered separate entities for permission to access in spite of the fact that they are all electronically stored in the same database. It doesn’t matter that the glitch broke the ‘locks’ that kept the data separate were broken. One has a moral, ethical, and legal duty to not go peeking at data that doesn’t belong to you.
Oh please, not the china. Your last go at this saddled the WH with garish and tasteless china. Laura and Michelle either have better taste or hired better stylists.
She’s still burned from not baking brownies at the White House 23 years ago. Got told that the media and a large segment of the public didn’t want any housework-shirking feminists with their President. And just think of the Big Dog jokes if it got out that it was now the former President’s job to have aesthetic sense and hob-nob with the ladies of the Village.
Hillary definitely isn’t going anywhere near there this time. And not Presidential Consort title either. Having a female commander-in-chief for the “mightiest military in the world” is going to be more of a shock than a black President, mitigated only by Hillary’s Thatcherist-tough image, which really gets the right-wing spinning out all sorts of fantasies.
Whatever it’s about, it’s not about china and flowers. It’s about the anxiety of a woman having that much power and preliminary snickering at the fate of Bill Clinton.
Was told to lighten up a couple of days ago. This was my lighthearted comment. Plus I think the Clinton china is atrocious and fashion-wise she has bad taste.
It was cookies not brownies. And it wasn’t whether she could bake cookies or not, but her arrogant and dismissive response and presumption that she would be a co-president.* Plenty of women can’t/don’t cook or bake (Ruth Bader Ginsburg for one) and they aren’t criticized for that.
*iirc, the public didn’t appreciate the active involvement of Rosalynn Carter in policy briefings and issues. While the extent of Nancy Reagan standing in for her husband wasn’t known in real time, enough was and was criticized.
Nancy Reagan was the real power.
There is the example of Eleanor Roosevelt that lends some legitimacy to active First Ladies.
Eleanor had her causes and principles and wasn’t shy about advocating for them. She did, however, respect Franklin’s political acumen and would back off or tone down her efforts if he asked her to. Also asked by friends/associates/Democrats to run for political office she blew off such suggestions.
A First Spouse can be whoever she/he is during his/her spouse’s term in office. However, voters don’t hire him/her as a co-president and don’t expect or want that when they choose to hire someone. Unless, and to date this hasn’t happened, a man or woman specifically runs as a “twofer” and makes it clear that the VP nominee is window dressing. (The requirement that the POTUS and VP be from different states makes it difficult for the tow to run as a ticket.)
I wouldn’t say the china’s tasteless I’d say it’s awful
love the Obama china;
The Obama china is nice as is the Bush china.
Personally, I like the FDR china the best because it’s understated, not ostentatious. Which is what a democracy should look for from its presidents.
yes, especially the informal Bush china, like that very much
I thought Bush was more like a bull in a china shop.
BooMan, Have you ever thought that Bernie Sanders wasn’t worth watching? Why would you? Otherwise you haven’t been watching carefully.
The important thing about primaries is how the opinion poll translates into the actual polling at caucus, convention, primary election — and how that translates into a number of delegates. It’s the number of delegates at the end that matter, and Clinton has a lot of the superdelegates already committed.
That puts the burden on Sanders (and O’Malley) to overwhelm the popular votes in order to force the same scenario as 2008 with superdelegates. That end of the primary negotiation was one place where internal party deals happened, not least of all the appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and likely the appointment of Rahm Emanuel as minder. So a Sanders or O’Malley win would have to pass this milestone unless the Democrats have a brokered convention — and you know what delegate sentiment for that would be.
The question of whether Sanders wins really is beside the point. The real point of a Sanders run was to find out whether American political process is capable of transformation. So far, as expected, it is a tough fight. Sanders seems to be holding his own financially without having to tap big sources of money or big donors; financial contribution with Sanders is assumed to go with voting and mobilization of other voters. Sanders has done well in the media when he has been given access, but we won’t know until the votes start being counted whether there is traction outside the media/polling view of the campaign. Can Sanders run the sort of stealth campaign that Reagan ran in many places in which Reagan voters did not tell their friends, family, neighbors, and definitely not their co-workers that they were breaking with the Democratic party in their voting conservative? In Sanders’s case, voting for a “democratic socialist”. If Sanders has found the transformation, it will show in an underestimation of his strength in notionally conservative areas.
If you want a future for the Democratic Party, someone has to make the case for conservative failure. Sanders’s campaigning against billionaires sense of privilege does not quite get to that point; it seeks to pull in the 99% who are tired of the 1% getting the goodies at their expense. Arguing the failure of conservatism is necessary because the products of conservatism are what have dramatically failed: paring down of government to military and police; failure to use fiscal policy for managing the economy; military-industrial-complex sacred cows; private-public partnerships; government-sponsored enterprises instead of government departments; the Washington economic consensus; cult of chest-beating and toughness in foreign affairs; notional but not actual freedom; starving of infrastructure; not considering health care and education infrastructure; ballooning up the corruption in government; making money more important than voters for camapaigns,,,it goes on and on…each and every one over the past 47 years a demonstrable failure. The Democratic Party’s future is in providing the alternatives to that record of failure and doing it quickly. So far, I’m not seeing that happen with any candidate because they are afraid of the Wall Street media and fabricated shit-storms.
That is to say that politics in America must overcome the Wall Street media in order to transform itself. The people saying that Bernie doesn’t have a chance see clearly how difficult that is. But if it is too difficult to attempt, we are sunk as a nation. If nothing else, the Republican clown car’s popularilty should show you how fragile the US polity has become and how deranged in its thinking. A minority view, but a huge minority and armed.
Regardless of who is elected, at the moment the view to me appears that we will be longing for the good old days of Nixon-Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush and the days of Ford and Carter will seem an impossible dream. And Obama’s election the catalyst that sent the opposition party over the edge.
Some folks in the midst of this campaign are going to have to get creative in a hurry and continue this business-as-usual campaigning for 2016 to deliver more than intensified gridlock or catastrophe.
Microfocusing on poll numbers is a distraction from consequential politics.
“If you want a future for the Democratic Party, someone has to make the case for conservative failure.”
It won’t be Hillary, bet on it ((tm)Arthur Gilroy).
The fix is in. This databasegate thing is Bernie’s Dean Scream – bullshit but the media keeps repeating that Bernie’s people “hacked the database”. I keep sending him money. Twice this month. Once in response to the “two million donor” appeal and again after the DWS hatchet job. But I know they will beat him. Democracy is dead. Wall Street reigns supreme.
I see the analogy, but Bernie’s got a lawsuit and Hillary’s support is softer than it looks. As for the DNC or Debbie W-S, what public support do they have? Let the pundits harp away, it will only put the issue to sleep.
As long as ppl are contributing to Sanders or working for Sanders I won’t say anything about “he can’t win”. ppl sitting around in pajamas complaining about Hillary and whining “he can’t win” I have no use for
The crisis is far broader than can be solved by one candidate winning. And paying for lots of media just finances the enemy of the people.
yes, I see.
Here are two things you need to know.
1. The latest poll puts both Hillary and Sanders within the margin of error (and it’s a wide margin of error) in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Time for my argument that variance is more important that estimate at this point. Pretty much a dead heat in both states. And caucuses in Iowa can and do allow people to persuade other people differently from how they came in to the caucus.
In Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina, it will be interesting to see the proportion of all registered voters for a precinct/county that go to each candidate in each party. Someone should compile and map those county figures just to see which candidates match the candidates of the other party. This is a geographic analysis rather than a strength analysis. Which geographies favor which candidates and why?
2. And Cruz is turning the corner in his campaign towards sweet and cuddly. Even if it was satirical and ran during SNL. Watch the Republican field start to drift back toward humanity before the Iowa caucus. Cruz has made the turn after he pushed ahead of Trump with the crazy. Trump will have to match him and then watch the me-toos who still have their owners funding them. (Doesn’t it look a lot like Churchill Downs for real now? Someone should require them to wear their owners’ livery. For Trump that would be an monster T on his back. Jeb gets a W!.) Got to get the crazy to motivate the base and volunteers; got to provide some sense of safety to win the primary; the crazies are now pivoting to pick-up the lesser candidates’ voters before the Iowa caucus kicks off the voting.
…for its incompetence. This Salon story raises the questions that were immediately in evidence Friday as the story broke, that no one else to my knowledge has yet looked into.
http://www.salon.com/2015/12/21/bernies_own_breach_bombshell_ignored_by_media_clintons_campaign_coul
d_have_potentially_spied_on_his_voter_data_too/
It begins to look like the only way Sanders campaign could ensure that its own data models would not be breached by the Clinton campaign going forward was to prove in the most demonstrative way possible exactly what kind of data theft was possible and to make it public. Absent this demostration by Sander’s campaign IT staff, the DNC had proved since October that it was managing the database resources irresponsibly, and that repeated firewall failures were opening access of rival campaigns to each other.
Whatever the motivation behind the DNC’s failure to immediately, and transparently, resolve the data security issues in the system they control, they showed pretty clearly by their actions last Friday that they had a lot to hide. Apparently the matter will not be followed up with any further report to the public, and just as clearly, Sander’s campaign has decided that the more important issue of just making it public was accomplished. Still, the question hangs out there: why was the DNC so truculent in its response on Friday?
A reason why this isn’t getting any attention is that the system vendor statement declared that no campaign operation other than Sanders peeked at opponents’ data during the time the “bug” was live. No way to assess if that’s a truthful or CYA statement. The latter wouldn’t necessarily even be to protect Clinton. They may honestly not be able to find such peeks and that’s not something they would want their other clients to know about.
While there won’t be a full and independent audit/review of this matter, a precise timeline — what, when, who — of everything from the moment the upgrade with the bug was installed through Saturday morning when access for Sanders was restored to the system could be very telling. As it is now, it’s impossible to assess Uretsky’s actions and we have no choice but to accept his firing as evidence of his wrong-doing. (But the totally innocent Shirley Sherrod was also fired.)
Others commenting on this story since Saturday raise the more serious concerns in this about the DNC and the VAN NGP responsible for the data breach (ftr):
DDay today at Salon:
The real scandal in the Bernie/DNC feud is the one nobody is talking about
David Atkins at over at WaMo:
An Explanation of What Bernie Sanders Staffers Actually Did and Why It Matters
Dayen’s article is good. I was less impressed with Atkins.
Would quibble with Dayen for continuing to use “firewall” in describing the system malfunction. While for users that isn’t necessarily an incorrect way to envision it, that’s not how the system is designed nor operates.
A key assertion that Dayen repeated is that four Sanders’ staffers “pulled” Clinton voter lists. NGP-VAN has so far claimed that only one staffer did multiple inquiries that returned the public and Clinton’s private information and saved something from those inquiries in a folder on the VAN. Couldn’t export, save, or print the results from the queries — according to NGP-VAN.
The only thing I’ve heard/read that Uretsky possibly captured was summary Clinton data on voter commitment. But I’m not sure that such information would have much practical value. Sure it’s more solid than voter preference polling in discriminating among committed, leaning, open, undecided voters that have been contacted and assessed by Clinton’s team, but I’m inclined to say, so what? Sanders is well away that he has an uphill climb against Clinton and has no alternative than to continue doing what he’s been doing regardless of whatever is in Clinton’s data.
Perhaps in drawing attention to the peek at Clinton’s secret data is a smokescreen or a serendipitous gift that the DNC could run with to tarnish Sanders. That timeline sure would help me to know which way to lean on this.
So the whole thing lasted less than an hour, actions were fully tracked (known by the staffer they were tracked) by the server and lists saved to personal folders with no permission to export, download or print. But now the important part; the personal folders resided on the server controlled by the DNC’s vendor. How long past that hour do you think those folders lasted plus the staffer was immediately fired losing access to everything? The only conclusion I can draw is that the data was of zero value to the Bernie campaign just as Bernie wanted it.
Another thing seems to get lost in the mix. There was a contractual agreement between Bernie’s campaign and the DNC for a ten day notification and waiting period in case of a breach. This was to prevent exactly the kind of knee jerk action taken by Debbie. One basis for Bernie’s lawsuit was that the DNC had violated its own rules about the contractual ten day waiting period.
One might argue on the establishment side that Debbie had no choice but to immediately secure the data. I might be willing to buy that if Debbie had not gone on both CNN and MSNBC to say Bernie was no better than a common house thief who found an unlocked door then `took things’. For me this was a gift opportunity for a Hillary operative to ratfuck Bernie.
The question now is what to do about it. Bernie says he wants to take on Wall Street and the Billionaire Class. To get that chance is he must be willing to take on the Clinton Machine and win.
In the last debate Bernie called for and Hillary agreed to an outside independent audit of this security breach. Bernie could hire a contractor that should be acceptable to the DNC, asking the DNC to pay, of course. If the DNC and Debbie refuse to cooperate then Bernie must make that very public. Bernie doesn’t have to go negative on Hillary because Hillary would be going negative on herself. It is also a big negative for Hillary if the audit goes forward to prove things written here are actually true with Hillary then trying to explain that away. I think both Hillary and the DNC will not want to engage in this kind of pissing match for several news cycles just before Iowa. Bernie can quietly let the DNC (and Hillary) know this will all go away if Debbie Wasserman-Shultz resigns. The problem was never the data but the ratfucking attempted by a DNC Chair that cannot be allowed to stand.
The Sanders/DNC contract has not been lost in the mix. It formed the basis of the lawsuit and the reason why the lockout was suspended.
The “bug” was live for about four hours. How it drew the attention of Sanders’ staffers in the last hour is undefined. What could have his staffers been doing that morning that inadvertently (so we’re told) revealed Clinton private data? Pulling registration lists for weekend canvassers would be one likely thing. As would routine access of individual voters for update entries. There are people that donated to both campaigns; so, it wouldn’t be surprising to me that Clinton info popped up when a voter file was opened. It’s more difficult for me to speculate on how pulling up voter lists would lead to observing the appearance of the Clinton data.
I’m decent enough at smelling a rat, but beating a machine is beyond me. (That’s where honesty and disinterest in power is a handicap.) What I do know is that if one doesn’t have the requisite tools and/or evidence to take on and win against someone in a powerful position, it’s best to not to do so. DWS has doubled down on the “seriousness of Uretsky’s ‘breach’ and it left her with no choice but to lock Sanders out.” That’s working with the Clinton faction and partially working with Sanders’ supporters. For those that smell a rat, that’s still a long way away from knowing who, what, why, etc.
It could be just as likely that the campaign knowing that the vendor’s software was buggy might had someone routinely trying to penetrate/access it to see what they can get from the Clinton campaign.
Not likely at all for Sanders’ campaign. Unless one doesn’t believe that the person at the top sets the ethical standards of an operation. Doesn’t mean that a bad apple (or good apple in an unethical operation) never exists. But those that have known Uretsky for a long time have no doubt that he’s a good apple.
If it were recognized that the system was buggy, routine testing to protect one’s own data would be a possibility, but from what little is known, that appears not to be how this event evolved. OTOH, if the system “bugginess” were recognized and suspected of not being inadvertent, it seems normal to me that the appearance of Clinton data would prompt a “wtf response” and totally rational to attempt to check it out before reporting the problem.
I meant the contract issue lost in the mix on this blog, not inside the Bernie campaign.
“That’s where honesty and disinterest in power is a handicap.”
I’ve always tried to be non-judgmental to a fault in my personal life and in my long EE career managing and designing micro circuits for several of the largest companies. I did find far too many times that honesty and trying to do the right thing for the people involved was a true handicap to my career. During those years I did find something that would work to deal with the most powerful and vicious people you can imagine. I used to like to say in designing microcircuits, you can’t legislate physics. Somehow effectively dealing with these people almost never involved using the facts because the facts would often just confuse them. While I didn’t know what to call this at time, the solution was the absolute need to satisfy the Nash Equilibrium (modern game theory). One can always get these powerful vicious people to do things they would rather not do if one can demonstrate that it is in their best interest to do so. This really works.
If you’re going to take on something as powerful as the Clinton Machine you best have a well defined achievable goal. This is the battle, not the war. The problem here is having a Clinton operative in control of our DNC. If we could convince the Clinton power structure to remove this stone from our shoe either by Debbie resigning or receiving a pink slip, that would be a major victory for the Bernie campaign. Hillary gained ground standing up the Republicans in her email hearing just as Bernie will gain ground standing up to the Clinton Machine to get rid of Debbie Wasserman-Shultz. Bernie will have brought fairness back to the DNC, just a preview of what’s to come if he gets nominated and becomes President.
Debbie is not the sharpest tool in the shed and probably has no idea that being exposed trying to rig a national primary will end any future political career she might have once had. She will have to be forced out.
So how does the Nash Equilibrium come into this? Josh Marshall points out that if the Bernie supporters start to think they’ve been unfairly treated, that will introduce a toxic chemical into the bloodstream of the Democratic Party that could have unpredicted toxic effects both for Hillary and down ticket Democrats. If we make noise and Bernie holds their feet to the fire with the audit about the DNC Chair’s unfair and bad faith acts they will take notice because they need us more than we need them. Thinking about votes needed for the general and since Debbie was a 2008 Hillary campaign co-chair, they will throw Debbie under the bus because the risk of losing the general is simply not worth it. I’m sure they’re also aware that throwing Debbie under the bus only works if they do it now.
About the trolls downgrading our ratings because we challenge the Democratic Establishment, this is Martin’s problem. This can be fixed by getting rid of the average used for the ratings. A troll rating can stand as long as someone else does not come along to give it a higher rating. In that case the troll rating is ignored. The highest rating should always prevail. I’m going to write what I’m going to write so it doesn’t bother me now but I must admit it pissed me off when they started doing it. I do think the rating system is important because it moves worthwhile comments to the top. This change would make this blog better because it might keep more people commenting without harassment from the establishment trolls, whoever they are.
Whatever makes you think that Clinton could see that having her operative in control of the DNC is not to her benefit? That’s the whole reason why DWS is where she is. Remember, this is the woman that up against an AA man expected that playing the race card was a good move to secure the nomination for herself. And as AAs subsequently forgave her (just as they did Bill every time he threw an AA under the bus because that person was inconvenient for Bill with white folks), her expectation is that Sanders’ supporters will do the same by the time general election voting begins.
A couple of users abusing the rating system here isn’t a much of a problem. It only becomes problematical if they aren’t so independent and like-minded “souls” begin showing up and they overwhelm the rating system.
We should give Hillary’s professional campaign adviser’s credit to at least make her aware of the chance she’s taking by alienating Bernie supporters who might blame Hillary for her operative’s unfair treatment.
Maybe she’s arrogant enough to say don’t worry about it, they’ll get over it. But maybe she will also be advised that she lost the last primary with that attitude. She’s going to really need those Bernie supporters if she wins the primary and everyone knows it.
The best reason to think she will remove DWS is because Debbie has reached the absolute end of her usefulness. One more stunt (highly likely) from Debbie and the whole thing blows up again except worse. With the audit showing Debbie to be the idiot she is, Debbie simply becomes a liability with too much risk. People never want to do the things they must to satisfy the Nash Equilibrium, but they do it.
The toothpaste is out of the tube with Bernie calling for an independent audit in a national debate. If Bernie backs down it will look like he got rolled by the Clinton Machine. MoveOn.org (founded to help resolve other Clinton `problems’) is already calling for Debbie’s head and this will just intensify as the audit heats up.
As for me, I will contact the DNC directly and all Democrats running in my district in Colorado to tell them I, as a long time Democrat, will not be voting in the general for Hillary or any Democrats supported by the DNC if DWS remains in office.
The expectation is that the nomination will be secured for Clinton long before the audit is complete and will be of little interest when it’s released.
Do seriously doubt that anyone on Clinton’s team views DWS as a problem for her in the primaries or general election. And from their position and perspective, DWS has done a great job. Your vow almost a year before the GE notwithstanding. They know that only an infintesimal number of people that make such statements will hold to it after months of hearing how crazy, scary, evil, etc. the GOP nominee is.
If voters begin shifting from Clinton to Sanders in the next few weeks, doubt it will because of DWS. Even if some of that shift is articulated as not appreciating the appearance of a thumb on the scale for Clinton, that onus will be on Clinton and not DWS. Plus, officially Clinton doesn’t have the power to remove DWS, and if she called for her resignation or removal and it’s accordingly acted up, that could easily be seen as more evidence a Clinton role in rigging the nomination.
Sanders is doing everything that needs to and can be done. It is in the hands of voters to “unfix” “the fix.” I always hope they will surprise me.