'16 Democratic Nomination Thread

[In the Corn]

They need to elect Ellison to have any hope of a united party.

I cannot disagree with you more. The Democrats need to run further to the middle, as that is the population they lost in this election cycle.

[cardboardbox]

I cannot disagree with you more. The Democrats need to run further to the middle, as that is the population they lost in this election cycle.

I agree. As much as I would enjoy watching democrats become a regional party if they keep going left, I'd probably rather have choices in future elections.

[nots]

I cannot disagree with you more. The Democrats need to run further to the middle, as that is the population they lost in this election cycle.

I think you're both correct in a way. If they dump Ellison, the Sanders/Warren wing is going to be upset and it will be very hard to regain unity. However, Perez has a much greater chance of taking the fight to the GOP by appealing to the middle. He will just have a hard time getting the other wing to go along.
If they pick Ellison, they get a more unified party, albeit one that is pretty far left. It leaves a lot of room for the GOP to pick up folks in the middle. And Ellison has some baggage that Perez doesn't-- the kind of baggage that middle America might have a problem with.
Very interesting dynamic going on.

[Hodor]

I cannot disagree with you more. The Democrats need to run further to the middle, as that is the population they lost in this election cycle.

Well then we're going to disagree. There's no way the Bernie wing will move to the middle and if the mainstream Democrats underestimate our impact, they run the risk of further dividing the party. It was this division that cost Hillary and her DNC the election. We heard the same rhetoric about Bernie and look what happened.

[Hodor]

I think you're both correct in a way. If they dump Ellison, the Sanders/Warren wing is going to be upset and it will be very hard to regain unity. However, Perez has a much greater chance of taking the fight to the GOP by appealing to the middle. He will just have a hard time getting the other wing to go along.
If they pick Ellison, they get a more unified party, albeit one that is pretty far left. It leaves a lot of room for the GOP to pick up folks in the middle. And Ellison has some baggage that Perez doesn't-- the kind of baggage that middle America might have a problem with.
Very interesting dynamic going on.

What is the baggage you speak of?

[nots]

The pro-Farrahkan writings in college, some very questionable comments about Isreal, suppport for CAIR--these are probably the biggest. To his credit, he disavowed Farrahkan and said he should have more properly vetted him and he has walked the most troubling Isreal comments back (Schumer 's support is a nice lifeline) but given the embroglio with Wasserman-Schultz, I am not sure the DNC needs the controversy. We will see i guess, should be interesting for the polysci nerds (myself included).

[Hodor]

The pro-Farrahkan writings in college, some very questionable comments about Isreal, suppport for CAIR--these are probably the biggest. To his credit, he disavowed Farrahkan and said he should have more properly vetted him and he has walked the most troubling Isreal comments back (Schumer 's support is a nice lifeline) but given the embroglio with Wasserman-Schultz, I am not sure the DNC needs the controversy. We will see i guess, should be interesting for the polysci nerds (myself included).

Given that he's black and Muslim aren't these associations to be expected to an extent?

[nots]

Given that he's black and Muslim aren't these associations to be expected to an extent?

Perhaps, but then he probably shouldnt jave decided to walk them back

[Hornsby]

Perhaps, but then he probably shouldnt jave decided to walk them back

Ellison walked them back because he realized that he had greater aspirations than just being a congressman from Minnesota. Only he really knows if he still has those beliefs, or if he EVER had those beliefs. He's a pretty savvy guy politically, so I think that he'll walk back some of his more extreme positions if he gets the job. He realizes that he's gambling his career as a 10+ term congressman for something a little less tangible, but with potentially greater personal rewards.

[nots]

Any comments on Donna Brazile's book excerpt that appeared on Politico today? As many of us said in real time, the fix was in.

[onejayhawk]

Here is the article. Just dirty, backstabbing, underhanded, cheating politics as usual--for a Clinton. I would have said it was the worst ever, except for the Chicago crowd behind Obama.

Bernie was the designated patsy. It's to his credit that he made them work for it.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774

J

[Sour Masher]

Here is the article. Just dirty, backstabbing, underhanded, cheating politics as usual--for a Clinton. I would have said it was the worst ever, except for the Chicago crowd behind Obama.

Bernie was the designated patsy. It's to his credit that he made them work for it.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774

J

Not much here surprises me. Brazile's prose is overly dramatic in relation to the nature of her reveal--that Clinton's campaign leverage their big bucks to take early control of the party that was completely broke. That is certainly shady, taking control that early, but since the organization was in such shambles, financially and in terms of personnel (Schultz was a horrible leader), how effective could that broke poorly run organization have been in bolstering Sanders or any other candidate?

I'm not saying this to excuse HRC or her campaign from making this move, or to excuse Schultz or the DNC either, as they were all in the wrong. But I am arguing that the move did not amount to much. If they had not done it, the DNC would have been in no position to help Bernie or other candidates going up against the behemoth that was the Clinton campaign. They were the much bigger, more well organized entity at the time--she bailed out the DNC, and the fact that they were so broke and broken that they needed the bail out was the bigger problem.

That is a tragedy, especially in hindsight when we know what her winning the primary led to--Trump winning. But it seems to me that all the big donors who backed HRC early and directly, giving her that war chest, over diverting funds to the DNC, which then could have been in a position to be more objective, are just as much to blame. It led to HRC having a relative cake-walk to the nomination. The field she faced was the weakest I have ever seen. This is no slight to Bernie, who I liked and supported early on, but I can't imagine him being a real contender in any other election in my lifetime, and he got to that status, yes, in part because his message had finally found resonance with that moment in American history, but also because he being an outsider didn't know enough to know he was fighting a near impossible fight. It is like the team of young players who don't know enough to not think they can win. I suspect that other more in the know candidates didn't even bother, because they knew HRC had positioned herself as a Goliath and they didn't think they could overcome the lead she had built for herself. I'm sure it didn't help that President Obama was clearly backing her.

I have to say, in hindsight, I have to admit Obama is partially to blame for all this too (and not just because he roasted Trump at the WH correspondence dinner), and I say that as a big supporter of his on many things. The only eye raiser in this article, besides how melodramatic Brazile is, to me, was how President Obama, who was such a great fundraiser, hadn't bothered to bring the DNC back into the black sooner. But I guess he figured that wasn't/shouldn't be his top priority, since they probably weren't all that helpful in the regard when he was an upstart candidate. Like Bernie, his early campaign was fueled by grassroots enthusiasm and new, alternative funding--small, grassroots donations. And I guess the other part of it is that he probably picked HRC as his candidate early on, and figured she and her campaign would have plenty of funds, so helping the DNC wasn't really needed. That, in hindsight, was a big mistake, although I understand it--he aligns with HRC more; they are both centrists. He also, I'm sure, respected her more as the more complete and qualified candidate over Bernie and the rest of the field. Despite what so many think of her ethics and personality, her qualifications, experience and broad knowledge base on the whole scope of what a president should know was far and away more robust than Sanders' and anyone else. Of course, personality, perception, likability, authenticity, all ended up being a bigger deal than experience and expertise, and it was a mistake for her donors, the party, and Obama, not to recognize that.

But even with all that, I still contend it didn't amount to much in terms of things being more unfair to Bernie vs what he'd have faced with Clinton's campaign having the advantage of so much money and support from party backers independent of the DNC (she had the president, she had most of her peer politicians, she had most lobbyists and typical democratic backers, who all thought they were betting on the winning horse). If Bernie was facing the HRC machine through the DNC or through them just on their own, with all that I just named and more, he was still facing the same uphill, David vs Goliath battle. If Hillary's campaign hadn't bailed out the DNC and let them die on the vine, all they would have been is an anemic, poorly run shambles offering little to know help to Bernie's grassroots campaign. And he still would have been facing all that money and all those other support structures.

[Redbirds Fan]

Please.

Donna was so outraged that she waited fifteen months to find her voice, and then it took a big advance from her publisher?

The arrangement with HRC's campaign was so nefarious, underhanded, and dark that it was monumented in a written agreement?

I don't think so.

Brazile has been reeling since being labeled a cheater for handing out questions to the Hillary/Bernie debate. She's trying to purge her image, show that she was impartial. But the stuff about her "promise" to Bernie is just too much.

“Hello, senator. I’ve completed my review of the DNC and I did find the cancer,” I said. “But I will not kill the patient.”

Horseshit.

[Hornsby]

Yep, God forbid that the group that pays off the debt, and then continues to fund the DNC, might actually want a say in their activities. And what the hell...it's all on record? CONSPIRACY!

[The Feral Slasher]

If the DNC was going to do a dump deal and sell off all their assets to the highest bidder I at least hope they sent an email to the entire league first.