Interim Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile sent information to a top Clinton campaign official about an upcoming a question she got “in advance” one day before a very similar question was asked at a CNN Town Hall, according to hacked emails published by WikiLeaks.
On March 12, Brazile — who at the time was DNC vice chair and a CNN and ABC contributor — wrote Clinton Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri an email reading “From time to time I get the questions in advance.”
“Here’s one that worries me about HRC,” Brazile wrote.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/wikileaks-email-hack-clinton-donna-brazile-229609
It turns out that Ms. Brazile, advisor to Bill Clinton’s 1992 and 1996 campaigns, was simply a fount of useful information.
… Brazile, when working as a DNC vice chair, forwarded to the Clinton campaign a January 2016 email obtained from the Bernie Sanders campaign, released by Sarah Ford, Sanders’ deputy national press secretary, announcing a [upcoming] Twitter storm from Sanders’ African-American outreach team. “FYI” Brazile wrote to the Clinton staff. “Thank you for the heads up on this Donna,” replied Clinton campaign spokesperson Adrienne Elrod.
So Donna was sending internal emails from the Sanders campaign to Clinton’s team. [emphasis added] How you explain this as anything other than collusion to help out Hillary is a mystery, so there seems to be pretty much zero difference between her behavior during the primary and that of the woman she replaced.
As I mentioned above, Brazile was a regular fixture on CNN all through the primary. (And for a long time before that as well.) I couldn’t begin to count the number of times I heard Donna opining on the Democrats’ primary battle and prefacing her remarks by saying that she didn’t have a dog in that fight or a horse in that race or whatever the slogan of the day might be. When the accusations of collusion between the DNC and Clinton originally began flying, Brazile was among the first to jump up and swat the stories down, saying that the allocation of resources, scheduling of debates and other committee functions were all designed to give the voters a fair and honest choice.
Turns out that she was doing pretty much the same thing as Debbie Wasserman-Schultz the entire time. I somehow doubt that this particular email was the only evidence of her support of Clinton over Sanders and we just happened to discover it. The fix was in at the DNC to lock Sanders out of the race from the beginning. The real question now is whether their voters will hold Brazile to the same standard and demand that she be replaced as well. Since they’re now in full general election mode that would give the appearance of trouble in paradise for Team Hillary so I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for anything to be done.
One Clinton supporter who took umbrage at my framing of these revelations said that while Brazile’s actions might “technically be cheating”, it hardly mattered given how certain Clinton had been to win the primaries in any case.
Yes, the time has come again to debate what “is” is.
[UPDATE: October 13]
A new email obtained by POLITICO is shedding more light on the mystery of whether and how interim DNC chair Donna Brazile might have obtained the text of a proposed question from a town hall between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in advance, and possibly shared it with the Clinton campaign. …
The email obtained by POLITICO was written by town hall co-moderator Roland Martin on the day of the town hall to CNN producers. But it shows him using word for word the language of a question that Brazile appeared to have sent to the Clinton campaign a day earlier. …
The wording, spacing, capitalization are identical. [emphasis added]
The Clinton apologists who tried to say “What campaign wouldn’t have expected a question about the death penalty?” will have to try a little harder.
One candidate with 100% name ID
One campaign four years in the making
One mega-bucks contributor file twenty years in the making
One opponent – a 74 year old Democratic-socialist with near zero name ID
And they still had to cheat to push her over the finish line.
They can be proud of themselves the same way the Bushies were so proud in 2000.
“The reason I early on concluded that Sanders had no chance at the nomination was as much about how late he got started and how little progress he made uniting elected progressives and progressive organizers as it was about his standing with the black vote.”
Yep. Nothing to see there.
“…while Brazile’s actions might “technically be cheating”, it hardly mattered given how certain Clinton had been to win the primaries in any case.”
Yep. Nothing to see there. You never disappoint, center…
Cheaters are always the most classless winners. Must be why this group behaves like the Bushies ’00-05.
LOL They are getting accustomed to the reflex. Don’t even flinch. Well, they might have a lot of use for it in the next four years… if we are reeealy unlucky and Lefty HC was a campaign artifact. Guess we wait and see.
In fairness, one of the leaked Goldman excerpts suggests she isn’t in quite as much of a feeding frenzy over Syria as her “public position” suggets.
One out of how many suggest that she’s not far to the right of her public positions? The “one” may be a mere outlier.
Work with me. I’m clutching at whatever straws I can.
I’m good with straw-clutching up to that point where it’s denying reality.
WikiLeaks – Podesta emails – Brian Fallon:
IOW — a bit of BS propaganda for “liberal” rubes should any part of her speeches get leaked. And HRC-fans have the audacity to charge lefties with cynicism.
Lily Tomlin was absolutely right…you cannot keep up.
Unclear how that statement represents a commentary on the video clip posted by centerfielddj.
“There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as ‘moral indignation,’ which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.”
― Erich Fromm, Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics
.
Are you quoting Booman?
And are you arguing with the statement you’re quoting? “Nothing to see there” doesn’t really tell me much of anything.
Bernie Sanders couldn’t possibly be doing this because he thinks there’s some merit to choosing Clinton over Trump.
There’s an obvious explanation: the body snatchers put a pod under his desk.
Google Trends data shows that online searches for “write-in” jumped by more
than 2,800% over the past week… (www.newser.com/)
Friendly question: What are you trying to say with these clips? “These politicians with strong liberal credentials support Clinton’s candidacy”?
If so, it doesn’t seem to address the subject of the diary. Which was, in case I failed to make it clear: Donna Brazile improperly assisted the Clinton campaign and should be removed from her DNC chairpersonship for it, just as Debbie Wasserman Schultz was.
Just so I understand,
You are saying the head of the DNC should resign because she helped a democrat win the nomination over a non-democrat.
Shocking. Huge, Huge scandal. I cannot believe the media is focusing on Trump over this.
.
Stop rationalizing dishonesty. You and the DNC don’t get to assert non-existent rules after the fact. Nor get to secretly violate the rules because it didn’t serve your or their purposes.
Senior DNC officials had two choices: 1) play fair or 2) change the rules to disallow a Sanders’ campaign for POTUS as a Democrat. They did neither. The latter because they viewed Sanders as a joke that wouldn’t make it out of Iowa. The former because they were like Jeb? protecting the family.
If the DNC had announced as of 9/1/15 (when Sanders took the polling lead in NH) that he wasn’t qualified to run as a Democrat, the race today might look a lot different.
I have no truck with Donna Brazile. She’s a good organizer and OK media spokesperson, but I’d be fine with her leaving the DNC chair.
But I’m not OK with this issue being used to attempt to suppress the Clinton vote, which is quite clearly the real intent here. I don’t view that intent as a “friendly” one at all.
Bernie has shown himself to have the character of someone who would be saying that the primary was stolen from him if that’s what he felt had happened. No one was more on the inside of the campaign than him. He has concluded that Clinton defeated him in the primary fair and square and is quite worthy of his full support. I hope that Bernie supporters continue to accept his leadership with this vitally important electoral decision before us.
My policy preferences are significantly to the left of Clinton’s. But my policy preferences are significantly to the left of literally every single POTUS candidate in the history of the United States. I’m determined to be real about which candidate is by far the most appealing POTUS candidate in 2016, and I am made beyond furious by members of a progressive community who are openly attempting to increase the chances that Donald Trump is elected President, or are openly attempting to increase the chances that, if elected, Clinton has an unsuccessful Presidency.
I submit that if your candidate’s electoral prospects are threatened by exposure of her campaign’s methods, that is her problem.
Thanks for conceding that your intent here is to threaten Clinton’s electoral prospects.
I believe that your intent does not serve your policy preferences, as a President Trump or a President Clinton with a Republican Congress would not serve your beliefs.
suppress the Clinton vote is something you fabricated to shut down discussion. “suppress” – information about our candidate is voter suppression? From what they’ve written everyone here is voting the dem ticket – maybe some protest votes in safely blue states, I wouldn’t know. isn’t there some kind of meme out there about an informed electorate? or does informed mean “versed in campaign myths”, let me check my dictionary
This one deserves a 10.
What would have been revealed if Sanders’ campaign emails had been hacked?
It is implied that Bernie’s campaign did no bad or unethical thing ever. We know that to be untrue, and there would have been other bad/unethical things revealed if the Sanders campaign emails were combed over, curated and released maliciously and selectively, as is happening to Clinton now.
We can be as certain as is humanly possible that WikiLeaks is not releasing Clinton campaign emails which make her and her people look good, or emails which refute some of the inferences which past releases have made. We know this because Assange has openly said that he hates Hillary Clinton and wants to harm her ability to get elected. That is his real goal in these releases. Achieving open government is no longer his goal.
This is a very clear thing to people who are willing to look at this subject rationally.
Jake Tapper, interviewed on WMAL, October 13:
“I condemn …” is another one of those phrases that has has been so overused that it has lost any meaning. Not even strong words anymore because everybody knows that the culprit has little to nothing to fear. Brazile, like DWS, effectively advanced the nomination of HRC and that’s all that matters to TPTB. Both will be taken care of by Democratic Party elites and their MSM associates. If CNN no longer wants Brazile, there’s always MSNBC or even Fox. Or one of the “liberal” think tanks, if not a nice sinecure in the HRC administration.
disclosure: I’ve always sort of liked Brazile. Even after she chaired the dismal Gore campaign. But do have to reconsider if that assignment wasn’t strictly a demonstration of ineptness on her part.
OT some good news, interesting candidates on this list
https://ourrevolution.com/candidates
[I posted twice]
How does that list compare with the BernieCrats?
Bernie appeared to lose the narrative in June. (Not unusual when one is forced to confront a significant loss and he was under a lot of pressure from his supporters that wanted him to fight for the nomination at the convention.) A shame as up until the point when he had to concede in some way and as he’d promised, endorse the Democratic nominee, he’d run a very impressive campaign. Settling for participation in the party platform committee (and whatever other small concessions he was able to get) made him look like a cheap sell-out. My take is that his core team lacked someone able to think outside the box and put together a tough negotiating proposal.
IMHO there was no need to launch “Our Revolution” and it’s been a bust anyway (and the name sucks). Bernie stumping for Hillary is unlikely to have persuaded anyone and it stripped him of his dignity. Tomorrow he’s doing his first real Bernie sort of thing since June. A rally for ColoradoCare which Hickenlooper, Bennet and DNC folks oppose. His deal should have been I’ll 1) endorse HRC and 2) work on getting liberal/progressive voters to the polls in November. At the convention to his delegates: 1) endorse HRC and 2) we have a lot of elections to work on between now and November. Then he, his team, and his supporters could have focused on those D BernieCrats that won their primary elections and Green nominees where appropriate.
I think you’re completely wrong. there was no clear path forward once he didn’t win the nomination. there is still is no clear path forward. the candidates on the list all look promising. that is what is going to get us somewhere progressive ppl doing something. it’s not clear what is going to move us forward, as i said. how can you say it’s failed already when it hasn’t happened yet. perhaps you misunderstand the magnitude or the shape of the problem.
Forward is always fuzzy at best. If it weren’t, most people would get on the path. But that’s actually not what I was addressing. Which was this election cycle, this one candidate, and this one campaign from the point when this one candidate was out of the running. What else of tangible worth could be accomplished between then and election day that would 1) increase the number of real progressives in office 2) retain the engagement and enthusiasm of the Bernie campaign. Bernie’s supporters know that he endorsed HRC and they will make up their own minds about the general elections and don’t want to be hassled on that by Bernie.
One of the best ways to retain that engagement and enthusiasm among a faction of voters is to win elections. To take some scalps.
You don’t seriously think that Trump would have been viable if teabaggers, alt-right, or whatever name one want to assign that faction that has always existed in the US population hadn’t won a bunch of elections in 2010 and 2014 and taken a few scalps as well? There’s a cohesion of purpose in that faction. Purpose that has been reduced down the “winning” and hating all opponents because they have lost the narrative on what they stand for. They look irrational because they are, but nobody else if offering them anything.
This was entirely foreseeable if Sanders stumped for HRC. In Town for Pramila Jayapal, Bernie Sanders Booed at Mentions of Hillary
In squandering his credibility, he hasn’t helped BernieCrats (you know the candidates and politicians that stuck with him during the primary) and may well have reduced the turnout for potential HRC votes. What will be left of all that interest and enthusiasm when this election is over? Not much. Worse, another half generation will have learned that engaging in politics is a waste of time, money, and effort.
well, i think you’re completely wrong. how many days to vote and there are no presidential signs or bumper stickers out there
Wrong about what? I am speaking of progressive activists and voter and not yard signs. (Romney was the yard sign vote.)
Just to be clear, this was something that had to begin at the conclusion of the Democratic convention. Bernie’s team on the campaign trail for BernieCrats and appropriate ballot initiatives. IOW, the only shift would have been from candidate Sanders to other candidates in different races. It would have been in promotion of “democratic socialism” both in and outside the Democratic Party. No different from Sanders primary campaign.
What’s your better idea? We know team Sanders followed a well-known loser script: 1) endorse winner and vow to do everything possible to defeat the GOP evil 2) go dark for two months and replicate DFA and OFA (both moribund from day one) as something, something for the future, but first we have to defeat the evil one in this election 3) after the long rest, begin stumping for HRC.
My suggestion is much simpler and more direct. Stay engaged to win some elections in ’16 and after November, all of that will be converted to the ’18 efforts and political action before then to thwart HRC’s neoliberalcon proposal. IOW, get on the right side of issues with the right political office holders and candidates. The MSM ignores noisy from the left, but it’s more difficult for them to ignore noisy winners from the left.
What’s your better idea?
my better idea? I already said I don’t know how to move forward. the problems are enormous and the parties as they are are not addressing them. that’s what I meant about yard signs. there are none. a few local candidates, that’s all. you are thinking too narrowly – build on the Sanders momentum, get progressives into office, keep everyone mobilized. but as we see from what mino and Tarheel dem post, the most we have is fragmentary suggestions for how to fix what a Sanders supporter would see as the problems. start electing these self-identified ppl on the candidates list and see what they come up with. it’s a start
So, while the problems are enormous, we should do nothing?
I’m not so much thinking narrowly as thinking how to seize any and all openings and opportunities when they appear, either spontaneously or through concerted action. Something that Democrats/liberals/progressives shy away from because it might be a bit messy or look messy to others. Decades of that complacency is a major factor in why problems today are so enormous. It was so much easier to vote for whatever Democratic sleazebag that VIPs and wealthy people supported.
I only speak in terms of a step that can be taken in a particular moment. A step that may not lead to another positive step but a step that is better than no step at all. Had there been no OWS, Bernie’s campaign would likely have been as robust as Kucinich’s. Could any leftie in 2011 have projected that OWS was a way forward to challenge HRC’s nomination in 2016? Of course not. And TPTB wanted OWS shut down as quickly as possible (the shutdown mostly presided over by the Obama administration and local Dem politicians). In part because it was a continuation of the 2009 meta-message — don’t say or do anything that could hurt the first black president.
OWS (9/17/11) and Elizabeth Warren (9/14/11) began at the same time (after months of preliminary actions/talks/etc) and for the same reasons. And Warren’s Senate bid didn’t warm the cockles of elite Dem hearts. (They were okay with Brown.) One was messy, leaderless, and mostly disorganized. The other was the opposite. However, the messaging from the former was more powerful and it gripped more ordinary folks. Without that messaging, Warren may have had a D primary challenger and lost or she may have lost the general election to Brown. (She finished seven points behind BHO’s 2012 MA percentage and Brown finished nine points ahead of Mitt’s.) That was a good step. But then silence (except for whatever noise Senator Warren has been able to make in DC) until Sanders stepped into the vacuum in 2015.
How did we get from “hope and change” (which at an emotional and precognitive level was tapping into the same thing that OWS more articulately addressed) to ending up with D elites totally selecting and funding the nominee as if the electoral reforms in the 20th century had never happened? Not that BHO is other than Clinton-lite, but that’s not how he sold himself in 2008. It this what it’s come to, a never-ending parade of Clintons and versions of Bushes? The latter only electible when it doesn’t display its fangs and the former does.
We shall have to see how this works out in the coming two years….
Earlier this month, an Economist/YouGov poll found that 59 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of Sanders, while only 33 percent hold an unfavorable one.
Female Americans like Bernie (by a count of 60 percent to 39 percent). Male Americans like Bernie (58 to 36 percent). Black Americans like Bernie (67 to 21 percent). White Americans like Bernie (57 to 36 percent).
Dozens of other surveys yield similar results.
Can this be translated into more leftish policies?
https:/www.jacobinmag.com/2016/10/bernie-sanders-polling-favorability-trump-hillary-clinton
Saw that. wrt question, not unless voices and politicians that are like Bernie in his commitment, personal decency, and not financially greedy. And they need to be younger than Bernie. It’s not that progressive policies are unpopular or don’t sell; it’s that few politicians are interested in such policies and those that are always seem to lack one or more requisite qualities to get the job done.
Is this the same CNN who hired Lewandowski as a “political analyst” even though he was still getting paychecks from Trump? The same CNN who has explicit white supremacist Jeffrey Lord as a regular commenter?
Tapper’s arrival at his place of concern about the reputation of CNN is preposterously misplaced.
Yep, there s(he) goes, changing the subject again. Did either of those people DO what DB DID? Would you excuse them for it? Nope and nope.
And this will be the future of POLICY criticism in the next term. Anything to shut down the discussion. Disloyalty. Secret Russians. We’ve seen it all before.
Pod people. Just not for teabaggers and Republicans anymore.
You think what Brazile did is a hugely bad and unethical thing. It is directly said here that she must lose her DNC Chairmanship over it, even though it had already been established that she had taken the Chair on an interim basis.
It is implied that it is so bad that it stole the nomination from Sanders. I don’t agree. Bernie doesn’t agree. What makes you a better judge than Bernie?
Here’s the thing: you aren’t bringing up this subject in order to oust the DNC Chair. You’re hammering away at this because you want to suppress the Clinton vote. And you want to hurt Clinton’s ability to govern progressively if she wins the election.
I wish you weren’t determined to try to do these things. I fail to see how doing achieving these things would serve your interests.
I DO think what she did was unethical. You excuse it.
What you make of my intentions is just your projection.
Lately, I’ve mostly been staying away from the FP threads. My tolerance for group-think that can’t admit any contrary and relevant facts, information, etc. is limited. Which is why I’ve not once ever listened to Rush, avoid all right-wing sites, and restrict my exposure to any so-called liberal sites once they become nothing but shills. Once any hope of informed and adult discussions is gone, no reason to hang in there and fight with those that can’t even acknowledge that they’ve tossed out principles that they once espoused.
Sure would be nice if the shills returned the favor and stuck with their own kind in the FP threads and stayed away from the diary threads sharing important information and attempting to hold adult conversations.
Aye. I have no interest in reading about Trump. He is very unlikely to be my problem. I haven’t even read several recent threads.
Trump is a symptom. More evidence of Democratic failures beginning in the mid-late sixties than GOP success. Democrats have been playing defense for so long that they seem not to have any recognition of what a real offense would be like. One thing it’s not is playing as dirty and being as corrupt as what one claims to oppose. Very important for the Democratic party to sweep the evidence of the Sanders’ campaign under the rug. I don’t mean the evidence of how well he did in the primaries/caucuses, but his favorable ratings among the general population as he became more well known over just under a year. The average person doesn’t respect dishonesty, corruption, and BS.
The media will take care of that exposure. Already doing so.
Equally important is to bury his economic criticisms.
Not “already doing so;” been doing it in earnest since January as Thomas Frank’s new article at Harper’s details.
It’s quite revealing that you proudly claim to have stopped reading about Trump. Given the fact that he or Clinton will be the next President, you are undermining your ability to cast a well-informed vote, and your ability to speak to other citizens to help them cast well-informed votes, by denying yourself important information.
Many here are watching Clinton’s campaign make the affirmative case for her candidacy so much more frequently than Trump’s. We’re watching Hillary campaign for and build the case for a policy agenda miles superior to Trump’s. Frankly, she’s making the case for a policy agenda miles superior to the ones Obama ran on. If you’re not following the news of his moral and policy sewer of a campaign, and keep yourself largely ignorant of what Hillary, Bernie, President Obama and other campaign surrogates are talking about on the trail, you’re missing out.
I plan to stop reading you, too. For the same reason. How many times do I need to read the same material? You are like a predictable parrot. Assertions you project and hand wavings.
Trump coverage is sludge–why should I want to read it. No policy in there at all.
Not only disturbing but insulting. It isn’t “group think” to disagree with your opinion and/or interpretation of the the facts. It also isn’t group think to not agree with you that Obama and Clinton are neo-liberal blights on progressivism.
You certainly have an over-inflated view of yourself and the one true flag bearer of progressive principles and that has resulted in you trying to justify that by insulting those who disagree with you as schills engaged in group think.
My response to that – you should get over your self and realize that your blind spot about your righteousness has made you an intolerable troll.
As for your request that us “schills” stay on the front page, no. These aren’t super secret threads and if I have an opinion to post I will. Deal with it.
Yes, group-think because you and others have been repeating the same talking points and memes again and again for the past year. New information and even relevant old information, facts, evidence doesn’t alter your riffs. As if you repeat it one more time, it will convince those not previously persuaded that HRC is great. And if you’re looking to persuade anyone that Trump is a loathsome creature not fit to be dog catcher, why waste your time here since nobody here disagrees with that assessment.
I have barely talked about Trump in this election on this board or any other. I refuse to give him any more oxygen. Now I have pushed back against the idea that Secretary Clinton and President Obama are blights on progressivism and/or that Senator Sanders is some sort of progressive savior and woe until all of us who didn’t see that.
As far as I am concerned someone who can’t do the basic things we have come to expect from serious candidates for president, like releasing their taxes, having a basic understanding of their own proposals, and filling out required financial disclosures is not someone that should be backed for President, no matter the party.
On top of that a candidate who lost people of color as badly as Senator Sanders did is also not someone who should be back for president of the Democratic party. Whether you like it or even admit, the largely white progressive blogosphere is not the base of the Democratic party. Women of color, in particular black women, are. They are the D’s most reliable voting block and the one of the top priorities for any serious Democratic candidate for president should be to find a way to connect to those voters. Secretary Clinton’s listening tours have been routinely mocked but in my mind Senator Sanders would have benefited from a listening tour in the south before he declared. He then could have avoided things mistakes like telling Minnesotas that of course he would win Minnesota because they were too smart for him not to. Mind you this was in reaction to the drubbing he got in South Carolina.
Finally, on a personal note, what made me an enthusiastic supporter of Clinton’s was her Alzheimer’s platform. Saying she was going to work to fund research to the levels required and providing more support for caregivers is huge to me given I have had two grandparents die from that insidious disease. Beyond the personal, Alzheimer’s is also the biggest looming health crises our country faces so any candidate who stresses it in their platform deserves kudos. Secretary Clinton was the only one who did.
Enough with the projection on Sanders slave-minds. I appreciate his finally getting traction on explaining to a large mass of USians what and how our economy has become what it is over the past 30-40 yrs. We must take it from there. He aint my Savior.
Female POC (particularly the older ones) are the savior and the leftward anchor of the party. We cannot be leftier than they are and they aren’t. They also are why we lose midterms so badly recently. They and the Youths.
(Why you believe Sanders would not have been interested in Alz work is a mystery to me, but whatever.)
No. You did not. I said it. POC, esp females, are the most moderate to conservative sector of the Dem base, recently.
“..more black and Hispanic Democratic voters characterized their views as moderate than liberal in 2015, and the self-described political views of both groups have remained stable in recent years. Last year, 42% of black Democrats called themselves moderates, 29% said they were conservatives and 27% called themselves liberals.”
(http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/09/democratic-voters-increasingly-embrace-liberal-label
/)
Thus they anchor the party in status quo.
Thay also have not shown up when Obama was not on the ticket. (http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics/2014/11/where_did_all_the_black_voters_go_on_election_day/)
I didn’t excuse Brazile’s action. I’m uninterested in organizing votes against Clinton for it, though.
OT, interesting candidates on this list
https://ourrevolution.com/candidates
THIS is my problem…https://newrepublic.com/article/137798/important-wikileaks-revelation-isnt-hillary-clinton
“…there are consequences to the kind of home-team political atmosphere that rejects any critical thought about your own side. If the 2008 Podesta emails are any indication, the next four years of public policy are being hashed out right now, behind closed doors. And if liberals want to have an impact on that process, waiting until after the election will be too late.”
For example:
“Who gets these cabinet-level and West Wing advisory jobs matters as much as policy papers or legislative initiatives. It will inform executive branch priorities and responses to crises. It will dictate the level of enforcement of existing laws. It will establish the point of view of an administration and the advice Hillary Clinton will receive. Its importance cannot be stressed enough, and the process has already begun.
The wing of the Democratic Party concerned about personnel decisions made its opinion known almost two years ago. Dan Geldon, now chief of staff to Senator Elizabeth Warren, met with Dan Schwerin, a top adviser to Clinton’s campaign, in January 2015. According to an email follow-up with Podesta and others, Geldon “was intently focused on personnel issues, laid out a detailed case against the Bob Rubin school of Democratic policy makers.” He was also “very critical of the Obama administration’s choices.””
“Around the same time as that meeting with Geldon, the Clinton campaign was setting up a dinner meeting with its economic policy team, Geithner, Summers, and members of the investment firm Blackstone (along with Teresa Ghilarducci, a retirement security researcher).”
Good article — primary source material eliminates the need to add what must have existed in order to connect the dots. Clever on the part of Obama’s ’08 campaign team to keep many non-neocon names alive prior to the election. But only fools failed to note the bait and switch once Obama began naming his cabinet and other high level appointments. I still found his inauguration a thrilling moment, but by then didn’t have much hope left for his administration.
That said, I think Dayen is either naive or trying to convince himself that the HRC administration won’t be entirely in sync with neoliberalcons.
All the boxes were provisionally filled in before April 2015. “Liberals” had no impact then and none since — beyond the very short-term scare that Sanders could possibly beat HRC in spite of all the rigging and propaganda her team mustered. Of course her guy met with Warren’s guy before this election began because they feared that Warren could be drafted to run by left of center liberals. Warren is a more appealing and authentic politician than HRC; so, they knew better than anyone else how much weaker HRC would be in a race against Warren. Now Warren is playing it the only way she knows how which is straight. Never much of a match against rank duplicity.
More from 10/2/15 email
Maybe they should have worried about such a large staff working so hard to prop up such a dreadful candidate. Lucky for them Bernie and Trump weren’t so similarly staffed up.
Yes, “propping up” a “dreadful candidate” who is on her way to a wire-to-wire victory, likely to be a landslide victory.
You and I have different definitions of “propping up” and “dreadful candidate”. It is literally impossible to be a “dreadful candidate” and win. It is uniquely difficult to win the Presidency.
Pardon me, but I was speaking of the Democratic primary. And yes, she was massively propped up against an opponent that began with no name ID, no institutional support, a media that denigrated him, and he’s no spring chicken. Had she had the same level of propping up in ’16 as she had in ’08, she may have fared worse in her second run.
You’re sure taking a lot of comfort in HRC winning against what will likely go down as the worst ever GOP nominee. Worst by a large margin. A solid Democratic nominee would be leading by forty or fifty points against the hairball.
Would she have beat McCain (without Palin who wouldn’t have been the ’08 GOP nominee if HRC had been the D nominee)? Questionable. Romney, if he hadn’t shot his wad in ’12 and waited until ’16?
Those are rhetorical questions and I prefer that you not respond as well stop trolling my comments to initiate another boring spat with me. Go hang with your like minded buddies and stop bullying those that aren’t interested in engaging in such low-rent disputes.
More filling in what was suspected with documentation This one on when HRC’s inner circle began reaching out to staff up her 2016 campaign. 12/13/13 they have David Plouffe on-board.
Wonder what the compensation arrangements were for those that signed on over a year before campaign funds existed from which to pay them.
To restate it as clearly as I can: This diary is about the Wikileaks documentation of Donna Brazile’s unethical assistance to the Clinton campaign at a time when she was supposed to be, and claiming to be, a neutral party only concerned with the voters having their say. I consider it proof that she is not an honest steward of the Democratic nominating process and I call for her to be stripped of her DNC chairpersonship in consequence. If she is permitted to merely cede the interim appointment, the institutional rot it represents will not be addressed. That is all.
(I do not imply, nor do I believe, that her interference changed the outcome of the nomination. Whether it did or not is irrelevant. In sport, a contestant is prohibited from cheating even if they are winning.)
In your only comment on that substance, you said that you would be “fine with her leaving”. I take this as a sotto voce acknowledgment of the authenticity of the evidence and the seriousness of the charge. However, if that is not in fact your position, I welcome your clarification.
But you then go on to say “you aren’t bringing up this subject in order to oust the DNC Chair”. Unless you are claiming to have a greater understanding of my motivations than I have, you are tacitly accusing me of lying. I object to this.
You further charge me with an “attempt to suppress the Clinton vote”, to “increase the chances that Donald Trump is elected President”, or at least that “Clinton has an unsuccessful Presidency” by hindering her “ability to govern progressively”. I do not object to this; I merely deny it. But I do submit that you have nothing to justify any of these claims, save a blind partisanship that can see a critical examination of facts in no other terms.
As for Sanders: Which is it? Does he “have the character of someone who would be saying that the primary was stolen from him if that’s what he felt had happened”? Or “there would have been other bad/unethical things revealed if the Sanders campaign emails were combed over, curated and released maliciously and selectively, as is happening to Clinton now”?
It doesn’t matter. Sanders has his vote; I have mine. And civic duty, as I understand it, compels the voter to exercise their independent judgment, rather than demonstrate obedience to a Leader.
To close on a conciliatory note, your skewering of Jake Tapper’s pious claims of CNN’s journalistic integrity was spot-on and rated accordingly.
I understand and respect your views here.
Brief responses:
I’m not hot on getting Brazile ousted as DNC Chair over the incident. I find your different conclusion entirely reasonable, and if that were to be what Party leaders decided to do, I would be fine with that.
I think we see where this goes, though. If DNC leadership does not accede to the demands of Democrats and others for Brazile to be dismissed, there’s no likely place for this dispute to go in the short term other than to say “I’ll punish you by denying Clinton my vote” and to urge others to do so as well.
That, it seems to me, would be an unreasonable position when faced with the radically different temperaments and policy agendas of the only two viable remaining POTUS candidates. It punishes, not rewards, Cliton for moving to the left and not giving Republicans and DTS’s any policy compromises at all in her real attempts to poach their votes from the open field Trump is laying out for her.
Perhaps I should just ask you that directly. Given your stated views of the urgency of ousting Brazile from the Chair, if DNC leadership fails to do so, what would be the best response from you, me and other liberals/progressives who all want the Democratic Party to move further to the left?
Finally, in your “As for Sanders…” paragraph, no choice need be made. The two quoted sentences do not contradict each other.
Are Democrats demanding Brazile’s ouster? I would hope so. But the only left-wing commentary I’ve seen about the leak runs along the irrelevant “Putin is trying to rig the election for Trump” axis.
No one who found good enough reasons to support Clinton will or should change their mind based on this. However, any progressives who didn’t already understand the DNC to be a lost cause might take this as a wake-up call.
It is very relevant that the Russian government is trying to manipulate the American electorate in order to elect Trump.
Again, it is not contradictory for us to maintain awareness that WikiLeaks is propagandizing against Clinton and the DNC while at the same time we use the leaks to help us organize for a better Democratic Party.
The conservative movement worked for decades to push the GOP to where it is today. It’s going to take some time for us to move the Democratic Party further to the left. It is not a lost cause.