It’s amusing to see the different ways that political operatives can grumble. On the Democratic side, we hear complaints that Hillary Clinton’s big ticket fundraisers (like the one recently hosted by actor George Clooney) are not as advertised. The joint fundraising Hillary Victory Fund, which is supposed to gather money for thirty-two participating state parties, the DNC, and the Clinton campaign, seems to only be helping the DNC and the Clinton campaign. The state parties look like little more than convenient and temporary bank accounts where the money is laundered.
The victory fund has transferred $3.8 million to the state parties, but almost all of that cash ($3.3 million, or 88 percent) was quickly transferred to the DNC, usually within a day or two, by the Clinton staffer who controls the committee, POLITICO’s analysis of the FEC records found.
By contrast, the victory fund has transferred $15.4 million to Clinton’s campaign and $5.7 million to the DNC, which will work closely with Clinton’s campaign if and when she becomes the party’s nominee.
There’s really three complaints here, maybe even four. The first is that the donors are being told that a significant portion of their money will go toward building up the state parties.
In the days before Hillary Clinton launched an unprecedented big-money fundraising vehicle with state parties last summer, she vowed “to rebuild our party from the ground up,” proclaiming “when our state parties are strong, we win. That’s what will happen.”
So, donors may feel that they are not getting what they paid for. Relatedly, even people who haven’t given money to the victory fund may be alarmed that the state parties are being neglected. A lot of folks think this is a rejection of the 50-state strategy that was employed by Howard Dean when he served as the chairman of the DNC.
The third complaint is that a lot of the money from the fund, including the cash going to the DNC, seems to be benefitting Clinton rather directly (at Bernie Sanders’ expense):
And most of the $23.3 million spent directly by the victory fund has gone toward expenses that appear to have directly benefited Clinton’s campaign, including $2.8 million for “salary and overhead” and $8.6 million for web advertising that mostly looks indistinguishable from Clinton campaign ads and that has helped Clinton build a network of small donors who will be critical in a general election expected to cost each side well in excess of $1 billion.
And this concern is tied to the fourth complaint, which is that this whole “joint fundraising” structure is just a fraudulent vehicle designed to circumvent limits on individual donations.
Yet, the Republican operatives have an almost diametrically opposite objection, which is that Donald Trump hasn’t done nearly enough of this joint fundraising and because of this, they’re getting slaughtered on the state level.
POLITICO surveyed nearly two dozen GOP chairmen, officials and operatives in key swing states who said the RNC hadn’t delivered on promises, imperiling their ability to launch the robust voter-turnout operation needed in the general election…
…The long primary season delayed until last week the party’s formation of a joint fundraising agreement with Trump, which enables him to raise money for the RNC in large increments. Even as he begins holding his first fundraisers for the party, there’s deep-rooted uncertainty that Trump will be able to raise the $1 billion many GOP operatives say they think he’ll need. Last month, the committee reported having just $16 million, a fraction of what it had at the same point in the 2008 and 2012 campaigns.
The Politico article goes on to detail the staffing shortages that Republicans are experiencing in keys states: Colorado, Florida, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Things are so bad that Arizona’s state party chairman, Robert Graham, says that he has only paid RNC staffer at his disposal and John McCain has resorted to hiring his own staff of organizers. In Ohio, Rob Portman is trying to build his own army of 600 interns.
By comparison, the Democrats are staffed up.
In Florida, the Democratic National Committee has more than 80 field staff on the ground, and state party executive director Scott Arceneaux projected a team of close to 200 by the middle of June. In Ohio, there are more than 70 full-time field staffers working the state. In New Hampshire, there are 25, with at least 60 expected to be crisscrossing the state by July.
And in Arizona, Democrats have 67 field staff in place, and have a goal of reaching 200 by August, according to the state party chair.
Arizona isn’t even supposed to be a battleground state, but the Democrats have a 67-to-1 staffing advantage. What this demonstrates is that there’s more than one way to organize a state. Clinton has been busy preparing for the general election and building up state organizations, even if she hasn’t been delivering the promised money to the state parties. Her victory fund has enabled this.
That doesn’t mean that the Sanders folks should smile on this arrangement, as it treats them as if they don’t even exist. But, for practical purposes, they haven’t existed for a couple of months now. The Clinton campaign and the DNC may humor the Sanders campaign, but they moved on a while ago and began preparing for the real contest. How outraged you are by this is probably directly proportional to how math-challenged you are about the delegates.
What Clinton has done is build up a very large organizational advantage over Trump that has the Republicans at the state level and at the Republican National Senate Committee completely panicked. So, it’s hard to really credit the argument that Clinton has neglected the states. Would the Democrats really have such a huge head start in Arizona if she had relied on the state party to staff it up?
Again, the Sanders folks see this as an unethical finger on the scale by the DNC, and I can understand why they feel that way. On the other hand, I’ve lost patience for listening to the arguments of people who can’t cope with reality. Clinton could have waited until Sanders conceded to begin organizing, but I fail to see why she should have been held hostage to a completely non-credible theory that Sanders could sway the superdelegates and win the nomination despite losing the popular vote and the battle for pledged delegates.
Still, that doesn’t mean that this has been a fair process, and it’s precisely because the charge has a lot of merit that DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz should step down and not try to act as a unifier at the Philadelphia convention. She could never succeed in that effort.
The perception of unfairness is the single biggest obstacle to getting Sanders supporters, particularly YOUNG Sanders supporters to back Clinton.
Arizona is to the Democrats as Pennsylvania is to Republicans: fools gold.
We really have to start training that “sense of fairness’ out of our youngsters! It is counterproductive in today’s Social Darwinism.
The problem is, as it always has been, is that fairness is a matter of perspective. In other words, people are terrible judges of what is objectively fair.
“It all depends on whose ox is gored”. Meaning, one’s view of the justice of the outcome of a dispute depends on what side you are on and how much personal loss you have suffered.
True, although in this case it’s 99% vs 1%.
Some of the state parties (I’m looking at you, Ohio) are so inept and disorganized that building an organization that bypasses them is clearly the right way to go.
Shorter Booman: you know that Steven D piece from yesterday? Yeah, it’s all wrong, so ignore it.
And that’s the problem with so many of the anti-Hillary conspiracy theories: they just don’t make sense. Why would state committees kick so much money back to the DNC without a complaint? But that’s nothing compared to Steven D’s farcical claim that Hillary had a mole directing Bernie’s campaign in both MI and PA.
And that’s not even mentioning their unique reinterpretations of the laws of math.
The only candidate in this race who has the ethics, honestly, and character to be president is Sanders. He is the only one who has consistently wanted ALL the votes counted! Every single vote should count, and to not do so is corrupt and undemocratic. He would be winning by huge margins in both the popular vote and delegates if the system was not rigged by insiders.
I think the ideal solution is to have the super delegates, every single one of them, switch sides to Sanders at the Convention. This would give him the win, and is the only way to unify the Democratc Party.
🤓
/ Poe’s Law emblem
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May I direct you to 538 regarding your claims:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-system-isnt-rigged-against-sanders/
OK,
I even did the Poe emblem! Paroty is dead.
What is a Poe emblem?
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The problem for you here is not Poe’s Law.
I always get that they are parodies, I’m sure everybody else does too. But they don’t work.
Why? Because in order for a parody to work, the thing you’re parodying has to be stupid already. Or at least your audience has to think they are.
So it looks like you’re in a bind. You really should do these parodies on Free Republic or some place like that. The only problem there is, well — Poe’s Law.
After about 120 seconds with that chart it appears Clinton did well in the south and closed primaries and Sanders picked up a lot of the remainder. If so, not hard to see why some think the thing is rigged bc they lost. OTOH it also suggests there may be some independents that Sanders could help Clinton with, if he has a mind to.
the analysis in the article is pretty definitive as well, the caucuses probably hurt Clinton as much or more than the closed primaries hurt Sanders, which basically means the results are what they should be at this point
“Sanders could help Clinton with, if he has a mind to.”
It’s not that clear cut, not by a long shot. If you’re talking about confirmed “Bernie or Bust” people, he can tell them to vote for Hillary — and maybe discredit himself with a lot of them. He can’t control their votes.
The only thing that would help is for her to make real, tangible concessions. Then they might feel they had achieved something. And even then it’s unclear how many would go for it. For the purposes of this question, the potential Bernie to Hillary voters are called “undecideds”. At the moment they are not sure what they will do.
I think what Bernie will do is campaign hard against Trump, continue to build his movement, and try to get his supporters to understand that supporting the movement means voting against Trump. That will help Hillary, but it will also build the Brand New Congress movement.
Serious question, not snark: Suppose Sanders were in Clinton’s position, with popular vote and pledged delegate totals assuring he would be the nominee. Would you be arguing that Clinton should drop her fight for the nom? Would you expect Sanders to offer her significant concessions to persuade her to end her campaign, endorse him at the convention, and campaign for him? If so, what would be acceptable?
Or would you do a victory dance and declare she should crawl off empty-handed into well-deserved disgraced obscurity, while her voters and backers should fall in line behind Sanders?
Clinton was in worse shape in ’08 than Sanders is and I don’t recall Obama and his supporters demanding the HRC drop out and endorse Obama prior to the completion of the primary contests. Some of us thought it was ill-advised to her to continue her campaign once she began wracking up significant debt. Personally I was disgusted with her use of the race card.
I don’t know what her supporters wanted in the way of concessions in ’08 for her to support Obama. There weren’t enough defined policy differences on which negotiate.
This time, what would HRC supporters want as concessions for them to support Sanders? Reject the Iran deal? Renewed military activity to oust Assad? Support the TPP and Keystone? Back off any regulation and oversight of financial institutions? No actions to reduce income and wealth inequality? You really want any of that?
Seriously, wtf do HRC supporters want in the way of public policies that Sanders doesn’t already advocate for?
The only thing that would help is for her to make real, tangible concessions.
Why would we trust any agreement or concession she’d make? She agreed to the May debate and has now told Bernie to fuck off.
Of course that’s a good point. But that’s why I said “real, tangible” concessions. Aren’t there ways of getting certain guarantees that could not be reneged on? I’ll leave it at that.
I agree it is certainly not clear that Sanders will campaign for her or try to convince his supporters to. But it is still true that Sanders can help Clinton if he has a mind to by campaigning hard against Trump. I suspect a lot rests on how he feels he has been treated. We know DWS is not his favorite person. Ca and the convention could be lots of fun.
Sanders is going to campaign hard against Trump, of that you can be certain. I also believe that by doing that, not only will he help to defeat Trump,but he will help to build the Brand New Congress movement.
Easy to fling around terms like “anti-Hillary conspiracy theories,” but in this case it only makes you look like an idiot. All the committees file FEC reports and while a task to read those reports, one can follow the money. Might not make any sense to you that the HVF would send money to state parties that would in turn transfers those funds to the DNC, but that is in fact what has been happening.
Steven D’s claim that Hillary had a mole running Bernie’s campaigns in MI and PA is a textbook definition of an anti-Hillary conspiracy theory. Because he’s so willing to believe the worst about Hillary, he’s unwilling or unable to employ a modicum of skepticism or common sense before posting.
That’s true of many Bernie supporters.
Some.
Not many.
Visibility and volume ≠ numerical significance.
Actually, you’re right, RedDan. All of the Bernie supporters I know personally are smart and informed. It’s just that some of his online supporters are less so.
Early adopters with lots of deeply held enthusiasm, their hearts are in the right place, but they did not get appropriate training from the campaign.
Someone forgot that catching flies with honey is easier than with vinegar.
Sorry to disagree, but some of the posters here do NOT have their ‘hearts in the right place’. Some are crackers and can’t help what they are, some are grifters who want the clicks, but many are disingenuous to the extreme.
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And some are actually Trump supporters who spew white supremacist garbage.
And how many of those online supporters are paid trolls?
The state parties get the money, then they send it to the DNC – which hires people to work in the states. This is just a bureaucratic technicality; the donors are getting exactly what they’re donating to – vastly strengthened state organizations (200 organizers in AZ, Yow!). It’s not just being spent for Hillary because she doesn’t need Arizona – if she wins it, she’ll already have won elsewhere.
Even if you could prove that, it no more builds a state party organization than primary campaigns in any state build party organizations/operations within a state. And none of the state Democratic parties have made any such claim.
Don’t care how you want to spin it, this is primarily an elected Hillary campaign operation.
Marie, please identify who you mean by “you” in first line.
Anyhow, I’m sure you know this, but candidates and congress-people rise in the ranks somewhat by their ability to raise money. Candidates in non-contested seats (or sure seats) still raise money and give it to other more challenged candidates.
I’m a county party official and I give money to my congressman who turns around and gives it to the county party to run GOTV campaigns, etc. I often ask myself why I just don’t give it to the county party myself and leave the congressman out of the loop. And the answer is that he needs to demonstrate his ability to raise funds. It’s an odd system, but that seems to be how it works.
That “you” was the person I was responding to.
Nothing wrong with candidates and the local party committee coordinating a GOTV operation and the candidate paying his/her fair share of the cost to the local committee. That’s a legitimate cost of running a campaign and therefore, such funds need to be raised. Demonstrated the ability to raise funds to cover campaign operations isn’t odd at all.
Where it probably does get screwy is with all the PACs and other committees that more likely dole out monies to candidates not based so much on his/her fundraising but their alignment with party elites that control those funds (those candidates are often recruited by TPTB) and the assessment of those elites as to the probability of winning/flipping a seat.
No, the HVF has not delivered anything to the state organizations. Read the damn FEC filings, as I’ve done, for confirmation of that fact. And unless all those state based staffers that are cited in the article are unpaid interns, they may be as real as all those state-based HFA staffers that her campaign claimed to have last July. The DNC was broke last year and that’s not because it was by-passing state Democratic parties and building a DNC owned and operated alternative in the states. The amounts the DNC has received from the HVF are only enough to keep up with its normal operations.
So, if someone is going to claim huge state-based DNC operations, they better state how such operations are being paid for. Otherwise it sounds like a lot of hot air.
Be very curious what accounts those paychecks are drawn from if DNC is just carrying normal costs.
Well, the money isn’t just appearing and it’s being paid for by the DNC. As you pointed out, before Hillary started raising money for them they didn’t have the funds for this. Money is fungible, but there’s no other way the books could be balancing: the money Hillary is raising is going to support state-level organizations.
It’s actually $5.7 million dollars as of the last filing, and probably significantly more than that now.
That pays for a lot of staffers.
Consider that the RNC has $16 million total from all sources.
Where are you getting your numbers from?
2016 election cycle — DNC through latest FEC report. Raised $102 million and spent $101 million, cash $9 million and debts $9 million. So, that $5.7 million is just over 5% of what the DNC has already spent.
Same period: RNC raised $150 million and spent $137 million, cash $17 million and debts $5 million. That’s like over nine times more in receipts than what you claimed.
With amped up temporary (?) DNC staff as field organizers.
yup.
But built with Obama training.
No insights beyond 2012? This is different ground this year. Pulling out the old voter cards from the database is not going to be tailored for the coming split of voter sentiment. How do you screen dissatisfied Republicans and identify convertible independent Sanders voters.
Is the entire establishment of the Democratic Party on autopilot? See if the campaigns have scheduled an August vacation.
I think in some ways you’re right about this. Different than 2008 and 2012. The lists seem useless. There should be some work done to see who has switched from Ind (or its equivalent) to D for the primary. They should be a serious target group. Just don’t know if Secretaries of State or County Clerks will make that info available so that the VAN can be updated. And I think Sanders will have to lend some help to move those folks to vote.
I’m trying to do that at the precinct level, but not every precinct chair is as ambitious as I am.
As far as R’s are concerned, we mostly stay away and, I guess, hope that the campaigns will be convincing to those voters.
“And I think Sanders will have to lend some help to move those folks to vote.”
Failing that they are ripe for Trump picking since many are likely working class young people who thought Sanders would help.
Only the ones that are racist crackers. And if there are a lot of racist crackers that supported Sanders and will now move to Trump, then the people who suspected much of Sanders support was racial in nature would have been correct.
Once again…..Trump’s whole campaign is based on racial anger at POC. Every single person who votes for him or says they will vote for him, or says he is a viable alternative owns that.
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Yup. You have to really hate POC to vote Trump.
So obviously Sanders and his supporters hate POC? Nice to know that. Never woulda thunk it.
you’re making a semantic argument.
I said that there is more than one way to organize a state and that Clinton is building big state organizations.
I acknowledged that she isn’t doing this by funding pre-existing state-run organizations.
Yeah, like those those huge ’08 and ’12 in-state organizations that were so valuable in ’10 and ’14. For someone so big into political organizations, you seem to miss the difference between an organization and a marketing campaign.
What you miss about political organizing on a nationwide scale is that it can only get you, at best, about a 3% bump, and that’s net because the other side is doing their thing, too. It can win you a state here or there, and can therefore actually make a decisive difference in a close election, but it has little to do with midterm elections where your voters are not willing to turn themselves out.
The midterms of the Obama era were not lost because they didn’t have enough well-trained staff. They were lost because the Democrats’ strategy for presidential success doesn’t translate or work in low-turnout elections. It’s designed to pull reluctant voters out of an engaged electorate, not to engage the electorate.
To win midterms, the Democrats need to make inroads with the Republican base or figure out a way to get young voters and the economically marginal to pay attention to midterms.
It would help if the candidates were exciting too. Most congress people are the same old, same old — and very safe in their gerrymandered districts. Doesn’t instill interest in the off-year elections and, by definition, they are always in the off-year elections. How about some ballot initiatives to juice up the vote? It’s more than just organizing on the local level, as you know.
The basic dynamic for off-year needs to change.
There really are no other viable options for the Democratic party,
Forget the off year party building – too expensive and demoralizing when it doesn’t work.
Republicans do this with church buses, child care, getting people election days off by working their shifts, and trying to obstruct Democrats from doing any of these things. For example, it’s unseemly and liable to affect appointments for mainstream ministers to advocate politically to their congregations. And the Roman Catholics are shepherded on only one range of issues, even when Catholic doctrine on other issues opposed a Republican candidate.
In a lot of places the Democratic leadership has gotten too affluent to think of these election-day support issues. Much different from even 20 years ago.
By far, getting off work and getting transportation are the biggest obstacles.
Ok But somehow the young and disadvantaged need to see a path forward, and some people they can believe in, those who advocate change. I am disappointed in Clinton as that person, or in the DNC. I would like to see local parties reaching out to young people with the vitality we need. Many of the old farts need to make their way to the door.
Shorter Booman:
Hillary may have pulled a scam, but it was a very cool scam and worked out; Trump, is just a loser.
This harmonizes perfectly with the well-known meme: Hillary may be bad, but Trump is even worse.
Or: Trump, the supposed master of the scam, is totally out of his depth when it comes to the machinery of politics.
Shorter priscianus: I didn’t read Booman’s post.
Shorter Gracie Ann: You sound like an ::insert name here::
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I did, actually. That’s what I got out of it.
She pulled a scam. Is that the same as saying she’s a con artist?
Anything goes these days. Winning is the thing.
Like prior presidential candidates, Trump set up his “victory fund” after winning the nomination. A practical consideration for him since part of his nomination victory was based on his claim that he would be self-funding. Still that doesn’t excuse the Clinton campaign on jumping the gun and compromising state based SDs with claims that she would raise money for their state parties.
The Trump-RNC victory fund deal for mega-donors, $449,400, will be distributed like this:
$2,700 Trump – primary
$2,700 Trump – general
$10,000 to each of eleven state GOP*
$33,400 to RNC
$100,200 to each of three RNC committees.
*Not sure I see the logic, but here are the eleven TVF signatories: Arkansas, Connecticut, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming. Would be surprised if the GOP state parties will be transferring what they get from the TVF back to the RNC.
DWS will not resign (stand down? sounds like something the Queen would do). Barack Obama supports her, and I don’t doubt Hillary Clinton does too.
I guess you got that from your personal crystal ball. You haven’t supplied a link, and I can’t find any support for it in today’s news. As of now it seems like everybody and his brother is calling for her head.
I’m definitely not interested in her head, as if I belong to ISIS or something. What a horrid expression.
Courage, old man. It’s a metaphor, and a very old one, nothing to do with Isis. It’s being used constantly in articles about her these last few days:
“There have been a lot of meetings over the past 48 hours about what color plate do we deliver Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s head on,” said one pro-Clinton Democratic senator.”
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/281147-dems-discuss-dropping-wasserman-schultz
Thanks, this old man didn’t know that. He’s still living in the time when it was literally meant in Europe and elsewhere and even today in ISIS territory. I suppose ISIS has injected the expression with new life and relevance. And delivering DWS’s head on a platter like John the Baptist’s? My oh my, the primary is getting very colorful, almost barbaric, splendid.
She’s going to take one for the team on this.
There are a number of visible concessions that are being arranged that allow Sanders to claim some victories for his side, make his strongest supporters feel comfortable pivoting to Clinton, and smoothing the way toward a vigorous endorsement.
These are happening at the same time as the end-of-primary vitriol is also ramping up… nothing new there… just go back to may/june 2008.
I wonder if this has to do with not trusting the state parties, to some extent?
ROI has been in the toilet, no?
If you mean the money is wasted you are correct.
Almost certainly, would be my guess. Would you?
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All it takes is a survey of who the Democrats have put forward in the Mass Gubernatorial races for the last, oh, 30 years — Patrick excluded — to see why you might not want to trust them with the keys to the caddy, so to speak.
Look at Maine Dems for another example.
Great, amazing, wonderful, smart folks…
Got fucked over twice by GOP-funded independent ratfucker Elliot Cutler, and could not figure out how to get him gone either time.
Yes, this.
And your solution is to have the national party choose the candidates for MA and other states? Perhaps they can grow the candidates in DC and then carpetbag them into whatever state and race they deem appropriate.
Let’s not overlook that fact that the DNC, DSCC, and DCCC have been very active participants in congressional candidate funding and selection for at least the past two decades. And there track record sucks as much as MA Democrats in electing a Governor.
So I was thinking, how would it play is Eliz. Warren was asked to be head of DNC? She has been neutral in this election. The Sanders folks think she’s on their team. She’s been attacking Trump better than Hillary. And she would probably be good at raising funds (a lot the Bernie way) and would recruit in a way that the Sanders folks might like a lot.
I wonder if she’s take the post?
The whole question of Elizabeth Warren is very interesting. It’s too early to tell what’s going to happen, but I think she will play a positive role.
Yes, she is going for the jugular with Trump. Some have interpreted this as “auditioning to be Hillary’s VP.” Nonsense, that’s just Hillary-spin. Why would she want to be Hillary’s VP?
The DSCC and DNC didn’t recruit Elizabeth Warren. They had someone else in mind and weren’t even too chagrined about having to work with Scott Brown.
Warren was as close to a left-Democratic grassroots recruitment candidate as we’re ever likely to see. She really didn’t have campaign chops when she entered the race — but she is a fast learner. The other candidates dropped out over the subsequent months; so, like Brown she didn’t end up with the primary challenger. Considering that BHO won MA with 60.8%, Warren’s win with 53.7% was solid but not knock-your-socks off solid. (Expect she’ll move up to that 60+% like Kennedy and Kerry in her reelection.)
Seems to me that Warren has enough on her plate without adding the DNC. Plus who would want the job mid-term when too much of the 2016 election results have already been baked into the cake?
If the DNC runs this on the level, those staffers will have not only the responsibility for a the victory of a unity Democratic ticket in November but the added responsibility of reinvigorating county and state party institutions, energy, and financing with a view to funding a good part of 2018 prep operations in states and counties by the inauguration of Democrats in a major reversal of direction on economic, environmental, and education policy.
Having the DNC centralize control also makes it easier to do with the momentum what happened after the 2008 cycle when the DNC pulled the plug on states.
At some point the DNC and not just Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is going to realize how much trust they need to rebuild with what remains in the Democratic Party of the progressive grassroots who did vote for Gore, Kerry, and Obama twice.
One thing that has gone so-far unnoticed is the fact that the DNC and the state campaigns are busy hiring a huge number of Sanders organizers…
Just sayin’
Is this what you’re talking about … ?
https://newrepublic.com/article/133676/bernie-might-helping-not-hurting-hillary-right-now
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-congress_us_5720e608e4b0b49df6a9c933
Both of those articles are part of it, but I read a couple of articles over the last two weeks indicating that a bunch of the staff being laid off by Sanders have been hired by Clinton and/or DNC, senate and house committees.
Can’t find the article atm… but they’re out there.
I’m not finding it. If and when I do I’ll post it, but until then I’m wondering if you read it right. What I am finding is:
http://brandnewcongress.org/home
Or this:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/5/23/1530053/-The-future-of-Bernie-s-vision-The-genesis-of-a-move
ment-Not-a-Bernie-piece
Former Sanders staffers, check
Senate and House, check
DNC: to counter DNC, not to join them
but not that they were hired by “Clinton and/or DNC, senate and house committees”. And BTW, “Clinton and/or DNC” on the one hand, and “senate and house committees” on the other, are two completely different things. And legislative staff are not allowed to do campaign work when they’re on the government’s time and the taxpayers’ dime.
Here’s more:
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/new-national-progressive-movement-emerging-shadows-sanders-cam
paign
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/sanders-backers-plot-post-primary-war-on-trump-223100
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/13/us/politics/sanders-supporters-propose-mobilizing-voters-to-defeat
-trump.html?_r=0
So the ethically challenged establishment candidate is ahead of the ethically (and otherwise) challenged anti-establishment candidate in setting up ways of extracting legal bribes from the moneyed class… Should we cheer this?
And after all this money gets spent on anti-Trump attack adds, what is her favorbility rating going to be then- higher or lower than it is now? Is her “I raised more money than Trump” campaign going to have any coattails? What is her mandate going to be once she gets elected- pass TPP for all the donors that sacrificed so much so she could get there?
And if the indictment comes through? what then- does she give the money back? Or will it be full steam ahead, they will never convict me in the Senate?
Look, I understand that it takes money to run for president. That’s fine. But Trump is going to attack her relentlessly for being corrupt. And he will be able do to that with free media every day of the week. Raising a ton of money from the vested interests and bragging about how well she’s doing it isn’t going to help that argument.
What Hillary’s Victory Funds reminds me of is her email server hairball. She wanted to shield herself from exposure as she with Bill’s help, turned the State Department into her family’s cash cow. That could still cost her the nomination even after the convention. She lost all credibility, maybe even gained some criminal liability to boot. There seems to be a lot of pearl clutching over this.
As for the Victory Fund, she didn’t like the personal limit finance rules so she set up a scheme to get around it. She exposed that her real constituency is the oligarchs; nice touch.
Hillary says that taking all that money will not influence her actions in office; Big Money does not corrupt. That was the same argument that won Citizens United. It doesn’t take much to see her statements against Citizens United are not only hollow but outright hypocritical.
I do have to hand it to you, without her and Debbie’s too clever by half laundry scheme, the DNC would be broke. You don’t think that money came in small donations do you?
Jeb had a big head start with a lot of oligarch money. How did that work out? Trump doesn’t need a billion dollars. He has his wit. Hillary is the darling of the oligarchs, her Victory fund with the entire Democratic Establishment lined up behind her but her matchup polls against Trump continue to get worse including in some key swing states. What’s wrong with this picture?
Just how are bone dry state organizations supposed to turn into coattails? Getting a penny on the dollar is going will take a lot donations because Hillary’s going to need a lot of money, even more that Jeb.
Trump may not have enough staff on the ground in Colorado but I wonder if he needs them in light of statements such as “…treats them as if they don’t even exist. But, for practical purposes, they haven’t existed for a couple of months now. The Clinton campaign and the DNC may humor the Sanders campaign, but they moved on a while ago and began preparing for the real contest. How outraged you are by this is probably directly proportional to how math-challenged you are about the delegates.”
Considering that delegate math, do you contend the Super Delegates don’t have enough votes to stop the Democratic Party and this election from swirling down the toilet? No, you just don’t think they will do it.
Criticisms need to be accurate:
Probably only a handful of candidates like Sanders that are fine with the personal donation limit, but as HRC has never commented on this, we don’t know her thoughts or feeling on this matter.
That said, it’s a stretch to refer to the HVF as a scheme to get around those limits. The individual donation limit for her campaign, the DNC, and state parties applies to all transfers from HVF to those other committees. Just as it did for BHO and Romney in ’12 with their “victory funds.” It’s like a hybrid between a Superpac and a regular PAC. However, it is a scheme in the sense that it offloads campaign expenses to the HVF.
Excuse me if I used the Hillary Victory Fund terminology wrong. I was talking about the scheme for no less than 33 State Democratic organizations to take large donations from individuals then move almost all of them the back into her Victory Fund via the DNC, a money laundering scheme, plain and simple. That was clearly to get around personal finance limits standing in Hillary’s way, same motivation as the email hairball.
This however was only a minor point of my comment that was completely ignored. It is condescending statements like the one Martin continues to make that is clearly helping to get Trump elected:
“…treats them as if they don’t even exist. But, for practical purposes, they haven’t existed for a couple of months now. The Clinton campaign and the DNC may humor the Sanders campaign, but they moved on a while ago and began preparing for the real contest. How outraged you are by this is probably directly proportional to how math-challenged you are about the delegates.”
Not to lay all the blame completely at Martin’s feet, the entire Establishment is providing plenty of help to the `put Trump in the White House’ effort. We have this gaff from one of the most usual suspects, Chris Matthews:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/05/gaius-publius-networks-are-colluding-to-declare-clinton-the-o
verall-winner-before-california-polls-close.html
Shaun King explains:
“What the Democratic Party, and apparently the television networks, do not want people to know is that super delegates, and not the American voters, are going to choose who this nominee is. … This – all of this – is why supporters of Bernie Sanders so often say the system is rigged. It clearly looks that way.”
And you wonder why I say the Democratic Party is in serious trouble?
No — the DNC can’t transfer funds back to the HVF (or HFA (Hillary for America)). Nor would it want to. Remember, HVF monies are soft and therefore, of limited use to Hillary or the party. The transfer of HFA, DNC, and state parties is how they become hard money and more useful.
I agree that the HVF to state parties to DNC transfers are sleazy, but possibly not as sleazy as team HRC publicly claiming to have raised big dollars for state parties and candidate because that is simply a falsehood. Equally troubling is that HVF demonstrates the same level of competence as everything HRC touches. HVF could have transferred more to the DNC (directly) and states (with that second step to the DNC) than they did. My guess is that they got so invested in bragging about the HVF cash balance that they didn’t maximize the potential of it.
One day the Democratic Party is going to wake up and decide they would like to play to win, without compromising their identity (assuming they have one).
Bernie’s a perfect example of how not to.
Doesn’t join the establishment for his entire career and then complains – hey they don’t like me, they are treating me like I’m an outsider.
Maybe that’s because – Hey, you wanted to brand yourself as an independent outsider and now they don’t owe you shit.
Honestly, you have to be a pretty dim bulb not to see that coming.
Same for Trump – wrt the Republican establishment.
The difference is Trump got the votes in spite of his disassociation from the Republican establishment. And now they have to kowtow to him.
Bernie didn’t get the votes and now he has to kowtow to the establishment.
Amazing how that works – win and you get the perks. Don’t win and you don’t get the perks.
Seems pretty simple and straight forward to me.
Bernie got a lot of votes, and he’s still getting them. He’s leading the most successful insurgent democratic presidential campaign in modern history, and 1,497 pledged delegates (so far) is not exactly chicken feed. I’m glad you’re looking at this in terms of where the party’s going, because from that perspective the Bernie movement is far from over, in fact it’s just getting started.
If by ‘movement’ you mean a bunch of people who sit out presidential elections, don’t vote in mid terms, or vote for Stein.
THAT ‘movement’ will die immediately.
If by ‘movement’ you mean a bunch of people who understand the long game, get out the vote for the democratic nominee, and vote in large numbers in every single election,
Then yes, it would be just getting started.
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I think you really need to look where the losses were in the mid-terms and who it was that did not turn out to vote.
“So why aren’t millennials voting, and why aren’t they voting for Democrats as much as they have in the past? According to the group Research by Circle, millennials had two main reasons for not voting. First, they were too busy or voting times conflicted with their work schedules. And second, they weren’t interested in the elections or felt that their vote wouldn’t count.”
https://mic.com/articles/103550/young-people-barely-voted-in-the-midterms-and-democrats-paid-the-pri
ce#.tvxrEeebA
Give them better candidates, and a leadership they can believe in, that might help. Anyway, since Bernie is very popular across the spectrum with young voters, and since this Brand New Congress is organized by young former Bernie staffers, it may just be that they have their finger on the pulse of young America, so to speak. And will proceed accordingly.
You are obviously right. We don’t need those people who don’t turn out for mid terms, like in 2014 and 2010. Or maybe you ought to figure out what is going on, so that long game doesn’t end in nothing.
Yep, that seems the way it works. But is it working? Or do the dems need a reboot?
Should have included the reason I blame the Democratic primary voters for the Bernie problem is that:
Lots of Democrats apparently don’t think their brand is very valuable (that’s a shame) because they are willing to trash what’s left of the brand in service to someone who never thought the brand was very valuable (Bernie)
Very odd hill to pick to die on.
You’re putting the cart before the horse. The whole point is that over the last 35 years or so the Democratic Party has managed to trash its own brand, and that is largely due to the Clintons and people like Debbie Wasserman Schultz. If this were not the conviction of millions of Democrats and independents, the whole Bernie Sanders phenomenon could not have happened.
Didn’t you notice. The donkey died in 2014. What brand?
Houston we have a problem.
He’s not complaining. Being an insider, part of the establishment, is a liability in today’s political climate. Or hadn’t you noticed?
Ted Cruz’s entire political success has been based on the fact that EVERYBODY in Washington hates him. (And that is actually true. Yet he’s no outsider, his wife Heidi works for Gold in Sacks.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/ted-cruz-wall-street-heidi-cruz-goldman-sachs-116381
Bernie is different. The fact is, he’s not “establishment”, yet he’s well liked and fairly effective in the senate. As for his home state, he is the most popular senator in the country.
https:/www.fiscalnote.com/2016/01/19/bernie-sanders-reputation-in-the-senate
https:/morningconsult.com/2015/11/24/bernie-sanders-is-the-most-popular-senator-in-america
At this point I kind of want you and Steven D to have a duel. Your conversations must be fascinating.
Personally my complaint is that the success is all about HRC and fuck everything else. Let alone planning for longterm leftwing party goals. Not unlike Obama, but in 2008 he still had what the netroots had built. What if she were facing a competently organized candidate?
Its almost like the dem elites don’t want to be able govern from the left…
She doesn’t have an organized opponent, and no, ‘they’ don’t want to govern from the left.
‘They’ have to be made to govern from the left.
You don’t do that by sitting home or voting for Stein.
.
I agree with this. But you have to start before the pros do in order to have choices to vote for. Sanders main problem was that he ran out of runway because so many of his supporters believed that he couldn’t win the primary.
Time to stop the single-candidate primaries that clear the field for non-performers. The time to start working on 2018 is now — in the process of being the “party faithful” turning out precinct victories that add up to Congressional District victories. Take care of the legislative and Congressional district victories and the state and national victories take care of themselves. But the state and national headliners are necessary to mobilize the Congressional district victories.
You don’t do that by voting for HRC either.
And I’ve already said I’m not voting for the Green Party.
When Bernie Wasn’t Even Mentioned …
○ Hillary Likely to Romp by BooMan on Apr 5th, 2013
○ Sanders and [Bill] Clinton by BooMan on Dec 11th, 2010
So Lieberman was a Democrat, mentor of senator Obama … I Support the Bill.
Cross-posted from my diary – ‘Game On’ – Sanders Up for Debate with Trump as Clinton Backs-out.
Had a long chat with the 22 year old member of my household recently. She described Hillary Clinton as a “criminal” out to crush her man Sanders, the only Honest Man Left Standing. Hillary’s corrupt, a criminal, a liar, so is Bubba, and by the way the World Trade Center attacks were an inside job, the after-the-fact engineering analyses were a pack of lies. And no, there’s nothing wrong with Bernie trying to flip the superdelegates after denouncing the whole superdelegate system as rigged and corrupt in the first place.