Month: July 2016

Over the last two days of the Democratic convention the primaries began to slide into largely forgettable history and glimpses of the near-future began to snap into place. What had been largely a conversation about the personalities and characters of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders became much more about the coalition that will seek to perpetuate and perfect what President Obama has created.

Eight years ago, Jeremiah Wright was so toxic that Obama had to shush him and make a speech on race at the Philadelphia Constitution Center. This time, Rev. William Barber II was invited to speak in primetime as a warm-up act for Hillary Clinton. The Democrats didn’t shy away from their African-American and Latino supporters. There was no Jesse Jackson figure to bash, no Sister Souljah to scold. Black and Latino organizers weren’t humored and hidden but invited onto the stage, one after another after another. Muslims weren’t a scary constituency to be scapegoated, but the scapegoating of Muslims was morally shamed in the most visible and compelling way possible. The LGBT community was celebrated over and over again. The disabled have never enjoyed so much focus and respect.

The DNC is co-opting Republican tropes while maintaining Democratic ones because there is now only one political party for grown-ups.

— Josh Barro (@jbarro) July 29, 2016

It’s also the progressives moving from countercultural to mainstream, with confidence + w/o apology. Coalition built https://t.co/MRTE6R31dt

— Martin Longman (@BooMan23) July 29, 2016

The Democrats did not shy away from celebrating police officers and they went back to the well, over and over again, to emphasize their respect for the military and their concern for veterans. When some in the audience grew uncomfortable and chanted “No More Wars,” the new coalition drowned them out with “U-S-A” chants.

This was a Democratic Party that was fiercely positive about America and completely non-defensive and unapologetic about how their racial diversity, religious pluralism and cultural liberalism might alienate historically critical voting blocs.

American exceptionalism and greatness, shining city on hill, founding documents, etc–they're trying to take all our stuff

— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) July 28, 2016

Not trying, Starbursts. Your safe is empty. https://t.co/8PbFcpIwer

— Martin Longman (@BooMan23) July 28, 2016

Tim Kaine spoke a foreign language repeatedly during his speech, clearly demonstrating that the party does not give a shit about alienating the crowd that seethes when told to push ‘2’ for Spanish. Clinton adopted a more progressive set of policy prescriptions than any modern Democrat, in defiance of people’s expectations and the Clintons’ historical positioning as New Democrats. She was carving so much meat off the moderate Republican bone with her proudly American thematics that she was utterly unconcerned about pushing economic moderates into Trump’s arms.

This was basically the triumph of the counterculture–a kind of bat mitzvah for a decades-long movement–today, you are a woman.

Today, you are the mainstream.

No more apologizing for what you believe. No more bashing your own voters to win the support of bigots.

And because this new progressive movement knows that it is winning and that it owns the future, it’s positive about America. America is a good place that is headed in an even better direction, and they are not fearing any man.

These are all disorientating developments because they defy what people think they know about the Democratic Party and the Clintons and politics in general.

And it’s somewhat of a gamble because it’s still possible that the majority of people in this country do not want to be part of a pluralistic, multiethnic, socially liberal and tolerant society led by a party of people who want to enact a broad liberal agenda.

What’s clear after this convention, though, is that Hillary Clinton is going to lead this coalition on its terms, not some terms she’s imposing on them from some DLC board meeting in 1989.

It’s also not the end of the story since the president still makes decisions on matters of war and peace, and there is no consensus in Clinton’s coalition for the kind of foreign policies she’s known to prefer.

What’s clear to me, at least, is that the #BernieorBust people who are walking off the field of battle at just this moment are getting off the train several stops too early. That Sanders would think his credibility and influence are better preserved from outside this ascendant coalition is either a bet that it will lose or evidence that he’s actually not aware of how much he has accomplished. It seems almost insane to pull out now when he could be part of a joyous and soon-to-be victorious team and get a ton of credit for it.

It shouldn’t be so hard to notice that the marginalized aren’t on the margins anymore. When the party is going out of its way to put transgendered and disabled people in primetime, when it wants fiery black preachers demanding social justice on the undercard, when it responds to Latino and Muslim bashing by highlighting Latinos and Muslims and shaming those who use fear and hatred against them, and when women and women’s issues are at parity with men, then you realize that what was countercultural has become mainstream.

Hell, the Democrats weren’t even afraid of the NRA.

Eight years ago, Michelle Obama got in hot water for saying “For the first time in my adult lifetime I am really proud of my country.” Maybe she misspoke. Maybe she unintentionally said something that was true. What’s clear is that eight years later a lot of people who were second class citizens are now feeling included and empowered, and they’re also in a patriotic mood.

This is why the Democratic convention was feel-good and positive and happy and uplifting. This is not a party or a coalition that is concerned about losing anything anytime soon.

So, the coalition is built, but it’s still not big enough or broad enough to win back the House of Representatives or many governor’s mansions and state legislatures. To do that, it needs to win over the Republican moderates without losing much in the bargain.

And, again, the convention showed that Clinton thinks she can pull off that trick by taking all Rich Lowry’s stuff without trimming on the actual policy at all.

This is what a realigning landslide looks like.

It’s all in place, and better than I anticipated.

So, what’s Trump gonna do about it?

Back in our July/August 2005 issue, we aired a debate about Hillary Clinton’s electability as a presidential candidate. Carl M. Cannon said she could win and Amy Sullivan argued that, while it was not proven that she could not win, she wasn’t a good bet for the Democrats. Of course, they were thinking about the 2008 election cycle, but these essays still make for timely and interesting reading today.

Dana Houle makes the case in The New Republic that the Bush family should endorse Hillary. I think in many ways, they already have.

A poll from Suffolk University has Trump and Sen. Pat Toomey getting thumped in Pennsylvania, largely on the strength of Clinton and McGinty’s strength in the Philly metropolitan area. I live in the Philly metro area and the sentiment seems to be split between support for Clinton and a wistful desire for Obama to get a third term. Trump supporters are hard to find and I think they’re dwindling. But it’s a big state and Trump will do very well in a lot of it.

Suddenly, it’s safe to dump on Roger Ailes, so that’s what’s happening.

Hillary’s Wellesley College is expecting a boost in applications and donations after Clinton is done accepting the presidential nomination tonight.

Grateful Dead keyboardist Brent Mydland died 26 years ago this week, which makes me feel very old. Here’s an interview Al Franken did with him shortly after he joined the band in 1979.

Here’s what it was like to see Mydland perform (and I do believe I was in the audience for this one):

Heroin is a disaster.

Various commentators, including Joe Klein and Jonathan Chait, have noted that the Democratic convention is much less about what’s wrong with America, whether that’s rising income inequality or the climate crisis or police violence or our foreign policies, than it is about the progress we’ve made during the Obama administration and more generally over the last century or so.

Part of this is simply that Donald Trump isn’t your typical Republican and there’s a huge opening and also a basic responsibility to disqualify him from holding the highest office in the land. But part of it is that the Obama administration really has been enormously successful and the Democratic Party has become much more ideologically coherent during his presidency.

The progressive coalition is feeling confident, not least because they’re celebrating the nomination of a woman as a major party candidate. The LGBT community has enjoyed a stunning string of successes in the Obama years. People of color have never had more of a presence on the stage, nor have they ever had their concerns more seriously respected in the platform or in the mouths of top Democrats. Tim Kaine didn’t worry about who he’d alienate by speaking Spanish during his speech last night. Even the ideological left represented by Sanders has never been as influential, as seen by the ways the Clinton campaign has bent over backwards to accommodate them and adopt chunks of their agenda as their own.

I’ve written a lot over the years about the need for progressives to grow out of their countercultural roots and ingrained suspicion of power. This convention is the first time I’ve seen this transformation really start to take form. The new progressive coalition doesn’t want to tune in, turn on, and drop out. They’re not too cool for school or too pure to engage in major party politics. They’re ready to be the culture rather than simply be cynical cranks and moral scolds.

It’s not complete, of course. Sanders decision to leave the Democratic Party is a discordant note that shows he’s as stuck in the past as his most “ridiculous” supporters. Overall, though, he pushed this process along even if he’s going to retreat back into the counterculture at the very moment of the counterculture’s transformation into the mainstream.

Nancy LeTourneau makes a great point when she says “It has been a long time since a sitting president was able to give a speech like that.” She didn’t mean that presidents haven’t been able to make good speeches at presidential conventions. She meant that we have to go back a long way to find a president who was had the popularity and moral credibility at the end of their second term in office to even have the opportunity to give a speech like Obama delivered last night.

The last two-term president, George W. Bush, delivered his speech to the 2008 Republican National Convention via satellite. He had some cover for not appearing in person because a hurricane was bearing down on Florida and he didn’t want to look as clueless in response as he had when Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005. There’s no question, however, that John McCain was not itching to have Bush as his character witness.

In 2000, the country was still angry about Bill Clinton’s behavior in office even if most Democrats thought it had been outrageous to impeach him over it. Al Gore not only tried to create distance between himself and the president, but he selected Joe Lieberman as his running mate in large part because Lieberman had been one of Clinton’s harshest critics during l’affaire Lewinsky. The convention was largely a sales pitch for Clintonism without Clinton.

In 1988, Ronald Reagan was very popular with Republicans and more popular than the person nominated to succeed him, but he was less popular nationally having staggered to the end of his presidency through the Iran-Contra Scandal during which a full third of the country told pollsters that they thought he should resign. He did give a speech at the convention, and his approval ratings spiked during his last year in office. However, Clinton actually had higher approval on his last day in office than Reagan enjoyed.

Jimmy Carter wasn’t a two-term president, but in 1992 it was a different Georgia Democrat who was selected to give the Keynote Address at the Democratic National Convention: Zell Miller. Presidents Nixon and Lyndon Johnson had no credibility left when the 1976 and 1968 conventions rolled around.

As for Eisenhower, he did address the 1960 Republican National Convention in Chicago, but he didn’t bother to mention Richard Nixon’s name. In fact, when asked during a August 1960 press conference to name an idea of Nixon’s that he had used in making an important decision, Eisenhower responded “If you give me a week, I might think of one.” Ike reportedly felt badly about making that remark and called his vice-president to apologize, but the record stands for itself. He didn’t feel enthusiastic enough about Nixon to make a case for him at the convention or any place else.

Going back further, Truman was too unpopular in 1952 to be of any use to Adlai Stevenson, and FDR was dead in 1948 when Truman sought election.

Clearly, of this whole bunch, Reagan comes the closest to having been able to give a speech like the one Obama gave last night in which a popular and morally credible president can make an impassioned and enthusiastic speech in favor of their successor and have it be well-received by the media and the people. But Obama has no Iran-Contra scandal hanging over him. He hasn’t been impeached or had to resign to avoid being convicted. The party doesn’t want to run away from or hide his record.

It seems like a low bar to set, but it’s remarkable that we have to go searching in the mists of time to find a precedent.

If you’ve ever been guilty of taking President Obama for granted, you should put an end to that now. On character and performance, he has no recent peer.

That may not have been the last great speech of his presidency, but I think it was surely the last great high-pressure political speech. He compiled a record for rising to the challenge in those situations that may be matchable, but it will never be exceeded. Barack Obama is the most clutch politician that any of us will ever see.

I am home and have slept. There is no event I can think of where one gets less sleep than at a convention. The delegation breakfasts start at 8, but you seldom get to sleep before 3 or 4. There is stuff to do during the day, and the logistics in Philly kind of sucked. All of the schedule is driven by prime time: so conventions in the eastern time are sleepless affairs. In California or Denver the time zones mean earlier ends, and more sleep.

A writer and Sanders delegate from NYC came up with a term to describe a convention: random convention person. It was meant as a complement. At a convention random convention person is a member of the media (case in point, I talked to a reporter from Rome for a while), some sort of political operative like a consultant, or someone rich or famous or both. Of course the last group are the delegates themselves, and they often are very different from everyone else there.

I talked to a lot of delegates – Sanders and Clinton. The Clinton people are anxious tell you how similar Clinton and Sanders are. The Sanders people think this is bullshit.

At its core the argument is really about the nature of power itself. The Sanders people, almost to person, believe that power resides in the people that fund campaigns, and not in the politicians. Because of this they don’t believe they system as currently constituted is capable of delivering change. Case in point was the line in the speech about free public university. The Sanders people kind of shook their heads. They really don’t think she means it, and a review in the Washington Post said the same thing.

Because if you really believed in to you would talk about it. You would paint a picture of what that would mean for people. If Clinton did nothing more than delivered on it it would be a very big deal for working people. If Bill was for it I have little doubt he could have painted a picture of what it meant. But to Hillary it was just an applause line – a way to placate the Sanders people. The Sanders people resented it.

The last night I sat for a time in a group called something like women executives for Clinton. They were donors, and had good seats, and were not shy about expressing their fear of Bernie.

So I need more sleep. There is a great politico article about the behind the scenes negotiations between Clinton and Sanders.

In the hall. A couple of observations

1. The gop is defining the debate.   We are fighting on their issues.  Law and order and security are dominating.  
2. If I hear strength one moe time tonight I will scream
3. Bernie people much less visible
4. Obama in my mind remains the difference between the parties. Each are about to come apart at the seems

   We have someone who both wings like. The gop does not

   Oh. And Biden rocks

   Full house. Fair amount of anticipation. The issue that animates is diversity. It excites.

   Some sanders people are wearing yellow. They are yelling no war. People are yelling USA in part to drown out the protests

   Still not much on the economy.

   First event I ever was responsible for. Carole King benefit Gary hart in Burlington. She has been active for among time
   

At this point, we don’t know if WikiLeaks is planning on releasing more embarrassing and inconvenient emails or if all the emails that get dumped will be stolen from the Democrats. Perhaps some problematic Republican emails have been pilfered, too. What we do know, though, is that prominent Republicans are setting Hillary Clinton up to take the blame if more evidence of hacking takes place. Here’s RNC Chairman Reince Priebus talking on the Hugh Hewitt radio show:

Asked whether he expected some of Clinton’s personal emails to leak from her server, Priebus said, “Boy, I don’t know.”

“Certainly it seems like we hear these rumors that they have these emails,” he said, referring to hackers. “Quite frankly if it’s national security you don’t want to see that happening. Hillary Clinton put our country at grave risk, and hopefully we don’t get to the point where those are released. But her sloppiness could lead to something very bad.”

Of course, the DNC wasn’t using a server in Hillary Clinton’s house, and there’s no reason to believe that her emails have been hacked by the Russians. According the forensic investigation, there’s no evidence that they were, anyway. But Priebus wanted to blame her “sloppiness” for any future thefts regardless of where they were stolen from.

Reince also made a curious prediction to reporter Andrea Mitchell at the Democratic National Convention on Monday:

Reince said, “I believe that here are more emails coming. I think this is just the beginning. I don’t believe Wikileaks or these folks, whoever they are, simply released the emails all at once without more to come. I think there’s more to come and I think they should be prepared for more excitement in the email world this week.”

Mitchell followed up,”Do you know something about it?”

Priebus denied knowing anything, but speculated on the motives of people that “like to play games” and said usually more do follow.

Thus, the Democrats were duly forewarned, so it should be no surprise that they sent out Joe Biden and Tim Kaine this morning to make a little preemptive counterattack. And it’s not that hard of a case to make. Just looking at the Putin Times is enough to convince me that Russia is now a propaganda organ of the Trump campaign. It’s obvious enough that even George Will is out there saying that Trump’s ties to Russia are the real reason why he won’t release his tax returns.

The pushback was sufficient enough that Trump was repeatedly forced to respond during his press conference today, and he seems to have badly ad libbed the talking points Reince Priebus was using because he went further than predicting that there will be more leaks.

“Russia, if you’re listening: I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said, directly addressing a country with which American relations are currently quite frosty. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let’s see if that happens.”

I link Trump’s remarks to what Preibus has been saying because the DNC emails have no actual relationship to Hillary Clinton’s emails or any emails from within the State Department. If Wikileaks has more DNC emails that they’re holding back, that won’t shock anyone since they didn’t release a complete set. But, if they’re holding Clinton’s deleted emails, that would be a major story.

Trump seems to have gotten a smear campaign mixed up with something real, and he wasn’t just asking Russia to release everything they have from the DNC. He was asking them to go find (if they haven’t already) emails that Clinton wrote as Secretary of State.

These are actually distinct things, although neither reflects well on Trump. In the first case, he’s nakedly hoping to benefit politically from the Russians breaking into the DNC, G. Gordon Liddy-style. In the latter case, he’s inviting a foreign power to do their best to hack into his rival’s emails and steal personal and governmental communications.

What’s astonishing is that he did this in a press conference where his objective was to deny accusations that he is colluding with Vladimir Putin and in hock to him. His opponents couldn’t have possibly provided a more convincing and compelling case that he is than Trump did himself.

The Clinton campaign probably cannot believe that this actually happened:

“This has to be the first time that a major presidential candidate has actively encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against his political opponent,” Clinton senior policy advisor Jake Sullivan said in a statement.

He added: “That’s not hyperbole, those are just the facts. This has gone from being a matter of curiosity, and a matter of politics, to being a national security issue.”

Jake Sullivan could have gone further because Trump wasn’t just calling for espionage against his opponent, but against U.S. government cybersecurity and U.S. government records. If Trump wants to argue that the “30,000 emails” in question are not government records, then he’s agreeing with Clinton that they are personal in nature and arguing that the Russian spy services should steal and share them anyway. But that’s not his theory of the case, is it?

His theory of the case is that the deleted emails contained sensitive classified information of the exact kind that we don’t want the Russians to read.

The man is a maniac and his candidacy is menacing.

Yet, Russia (and WikiLeaks) probably do have more to share with us, and undoubtedly all of it will be selected to assist Trump.

Fox News entertainer Bill O’Reilly told his audience that he fancies himself a history teacher. In that role, he took it upon himself to break the hard news that First Lady Michelle Obama wasn’t lying in her convention speech when she said that the White House was constructed by slaves. Yet, he knew that his history lesson would not go down easy since it sullies cherished notions of purity and national virtue, so he softened things on the edges.

For example, while he found evidence of “about 400 payments made to slave masters between 1795 and 1801” for contract work on the new Executive Mansion, he assured people that “free blacks, whites, and immigrants also worked on the massive building.” You see, the White House isn’t forever soiled if some of the nails were hammered by non-slaves, including some whites. As for the distinction between slaves, whites and immigrants, he explained that, too.

There were no illegal immigrants at that time. If you could make it here, you could stay here.

He did not explain how the nonimmigrant whites got here or if the Chinese built the railroads before or after the dinosaurs were raptured. Apparently, those lessons are only appropriate for Sunday School.

What he mainly wanted to impress upon people, though, was that things are not so dire as they might seem.

Slaves that worked there were well-fed and had decent lodgings provided by the government, which stopped hiring slave labor in 1802. However, the feds did not forbid subcontractors from using slave labor. So, Michelle Obama is essentially correct in citing slaves as builders of the White House, but there were others working as well. Got it all? There will be a quiz.

By saying that Michelle Obama was “essentially” correct, he was saying that she wasn’t correct at all, so when she walks around the White House grounds with her black daughters and thinks how amazing it is for them to live there when their ancestors were forced at musketpoint to build the place, well, she still hates America.

That the First Lady said something true but discomforting sure did require a lengthy response, didn’t it?

And we’re supposed to give O’Reilly credit for acknowledging this and even noting that Michelle was “referring to the evolution of America in a positive way.”

I’m sorry, but giving O’Reilly credit here would be giving in to the soft bigotry of low expectations.

Especially for the nemesis of BooMan’s frog pond …

○ HRC: Compulsive Misrepresentation – Unfit to Lead
○ Clinton’s 21st Century Statecraft and the Land of the Two Rivers

FYI the Republican nominated candidate for US president is just …. stupid. HRC has shown to be a conniving politician during her political career. She has no interest whatsoever in people and can’t communicate with the citizens of Mainstreet USA. If she becomes president, God forbid, her administration will leave a trail of more victims of war around the globe. Same as she has accomplished as Secretary of State.  Just look at her chosen advisors and her fancy with the powerful still walking on planet earth: Henry Kissinger. A war criminal pur sang who gets elevated into “knighhood” by president Obama.

 « click for more info
Hillary Clinton Touted Henry Kissinger, War Criminal, as Character Reference (Truth-out)

Obama was a disappointment in stopping the foreign policy tragedy initiated by 8 years of his predecessor George Bush. HRC will be much more aggressive in countering the threat of terror coming from the hornet’s nest stirred by decades of ill conceived US policy from both Democrtas and Republicans in the White House.

[This diary was inspired and motivated by nemesis calling all toasters who sees fit to attribute “1s” here at the pond, now that her candidate defeated Bernie Sanders. At least Bernie is a person who understood the wrong-headed direction of America in the 21st century. Thanx Bernie, you gave it all and made a heck of a journey this past election year. I absolutely hate coronations and political dynasties in America.

The Next Revolution: War on Inequality is unstoppable!

○ Emails expose close ties between Hillary Clinton and accused war criminal Henry Kissinger | Salon |

 « click for more info
Obama Administration Honors War Criminal Henry Kissinger With Distinguished Public Service Award (The White House / the Pentagon)

○ Obama’s Victory in Libya of 2011 Became Clinton’s Failure in 2016

April 18:

Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign on Monday accused Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign of possibly violating campaign finance laws through its joint fundraising agreement with the Democratic National Committee.

Brad Deutsch, the lawyer for the Sanders campaign, wrote an open letter to DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz arguing that the Clinton campaign’s Hillary Victory Fund, the joint account between the campaign and various Democratic Party committees, “skirts legal limits on federal campaign donations.” The fund is made up of the Clinton campaign, 32 state Democratic committees, and the DNC.

“The Hillary Victory Fund has reported receiving several individual contributions in amounts as high as $354,400 or more, which is over 130 times the $2,700 limit that applies for contributions to Secretary Clinton’s campaign,” the letter reads. “Bernie 2016 is particularly concerned that these extremely large-dollar individual contributions have been used by the Hillary Victory Fund to pay for more than $7.8 million in direct mail efforts and over $8.6 million in online advertising, both of which appear to benefit only HFA by generating low-dollar contributions that flow only to HFA, rather than to the DNC or any of the participating state party committees.”

http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-dem-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/04/sanders-clinton-dnc-
campaign-finance-laws-222102

April 19:

“It clearly goes against what was intended for the joint fundraising committees,” said Larry Noble, the general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, who served for 13 years as general counsel at the Federal Election Commission.

Looking at one example of a joint fundraising appeal, Noble remarked, “This is clearly a solicitation for Hillary Clinton,” and not in the way joint fundraising committees were intended to be used. …

The Clinton campaign vigorously denied any wrongdoing, blaming Team Sanders’ attack as the stratagem of a floundering effort in New York and elsewhere.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/hillary-clinton-fundraising-democratic-national-committee-2221
56

Today:

Leaked emails show the Democratic National Committee scrambled this spring to conceal the details of a joint fundraising arrangement with Hillary Clinton that funneled money through state Democratic parties.

But during the three-month period when the DNC was working to spin the situation, state parties kept less than one half of one percent of the $82 million raised through the arrangement — validating concerns raised by campaign finance watchdogs, state party allies and Bernie Sanders supporters. …

The emails show the officials agreeing to withhold information from reporters about the Hillary Victory Fund’s allocation formula, working to align their stories about when — or if — the DNC had begun funding coordinated campaign committees with the states. They also show one official blaming Sanders for putting the DNC between “a real rock vs hard place” by forcing “a fight in the media with the party bosses over big money fundraising.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/dnc-leak-clinton-team-deflected-state-cash-concerns-226191?lo=
ap_d1

The nerve!

In the most bizarre and darkly comic moment, DNC Communications Director Luis Miranda emails his colleagues about which local Democratic official to put on Morning Joe to rebut the story.

Miranda asks DNC Deputy Policy Director for State Party Programs Maureen Garde, then-DNC National Political Director Raul Alvillar, and DNC CEO Amy Dacey if they should put Indiana State Chair John Zody on the show.

But Miranda had a problem. The Vogel-Arnsdorf story had quoted a state official and a party operative who were pissed about their disappearing money.

Since those complaining were unnamed, they could be anyone. Even Zody! In which case, putting him on TV might not be a good idea.

Miranda, anxious to know if Zody is “in a good place” on the issue, writes (emphasis mine):

“From: Miranda, Luis
Sent: Monday, May 02, 2016 4:33 PM
To: Maureen Garde; Alvillar, Raul; Dacey, Amy
Subject: FW: Can we use John Zody for TV tomorrow?

“Do we know if the Indiana State Chair is in a good place on the Victory Fund before we book them? Any concerns with helping them get on air? Given the Sanders claim of money laundering I don’t want to help book if they’re one of the parties that are complaining off the record.”

To which Alvillar responds:

“I just talked to him last week. He didn’t mention anything to me. Let us check really quick.”

What this exchange shows is that the DNC officials, hilariously, didn’t know which local chiefs they’d screwed to the point of off-the-record revolt with their Victory Fund maneuvers.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/dnc-leak-shows-mechanics-of-a-slanted-campaign-w430814

That’s our Hillary – making friends wherever she goes.

As was the case with DNC officials teaming up to look for a negative “narrative” about how Bernie Sanders “never got his act together,” and pondering the possibility of a negative story about his religion, the DNC actively searched for a negative angle on the Sanders reaction to the Politico piece within hours after its release. They focused on the use of the term “money laundering.”

In fact, the use of the term first came from Democratic Party state fundraising sources in the Politico story.

As Vogel and Arnsdorf wrote, “[state fundraisers] worry that participating states… could see very little return investment from the DNC or Clinton’s campaign, and are essentially acting as money laundering conduits for them.”

These are loyal, party-line, grunt-working Democrats. And their judgment was: money laundering.

What does it all mean? If you’re a Clinton fan, probably nothing.

To anyone else, it shows that the primary season was very far from a fair fight. The Sanders camp was forced to fund all of its own operations, while the Clinton campaign could essentially use the entire Democratic Party structure as adjunct staff. The DNC not only wasn’t neutral, but helped with oppo research against Sanders and media crisis management.

Well, we need to look forward, not backward – as Obama likes to say when it comes to prosecuting torture. Bernie’s day is over and Hillary carries his endorsement into a bright future.

A future, we can be certain, filled with more sleaze, more claims of “technically legal”, debates over what “is” means, and everything we’ve come to expect from a political dynasty with the ethics of a hyena.