Democratic (Party) Direction

meanwhile, WTF is the guy's problem?

Now Ralph Northam says he'd ban sanctuary cities in Virginia, validating Gillespie's racist narrative: https://t.co/SC8sbcrgMJ

— George Zornick (@gzornick) November 2, 2017

I'm 100% fine with Dem insiders trying to distance themselves from Clinton & move left out of cynical careerism. It's a sign we're winning

— The Discourse Lover (@Trillburne) November 2, 2017

definitely seeing some takes today saying the Brazile Book is a good healing step for the party divide, we'll see

meanwhile Bernie is taking shit for not supporting Northam

https://www.thedailybeast.com/bernie-sanders-sits-out-a-tight-race-in-virginia-after-his-candidate-falls-short

The great thing about the Brazile story is that she is describing an actual smoking gun document. Which presumably means that document will come out soon, and if it is what she says it is, this seems like a pretty open and shut case. Until then, probably a good idea to stay away from any stan twitter, be it Hillary or Bernie.

don't think a promise to ban sanctuary cities is going to lure in Sanders now

xp

This will definitely be a brief open and shut case

A well organized, brief case

the major deciding posts in the DNC are pretty much all Hillary people, right? like I seem to recall someone saying that they made up the entire rules committee.

There was a shakeup of the rules committee in October, I have a hard time imagining anyone would bother filling it up with 'Hillary people', it's not as if she's going to run again.

sorry, I misstated:

Bernie wing now has zero representation on rules committee, which will determine how the 2020 primary is run. What kind of unity is this? pic.twitter.com/XCbPAgMSaL

— Claire Sandberg (@clairesandberg) October 20, 2017

i think it's pretty clear what kind of unity that is tbf

so uh yeah the response to this should be interesting, also megalol at Brazile calling her book Hacks

so i just read the excerpt. it seems like the meat is that the clinton campaign had fundraising deals with the DNC before she announced her candidacy. it certainly seems unethical (and iirc this came up during the primaries as well) but i still don't see where the primary was "rigged." brazile needed to show how that fundraising deal actually influenced the results of the primaries and i don't think she did that. it sounds like the Clinton campaign was exploiting the DNC as a loophole to bring in donations, but it doesn't seem like the DNC was much of an active player at all?

This victory fund agreement, however, had been signed in August 2015, just four months after Hillary announced her candidacy and nearly a year before she officially had the nomination.

I had tried to search out any other evidence of internal corruption that would show that the DNC was rigging the system to throw the primary to Hillary, but I could not find any in party affairs or among the staff. I had gone department by department, investigating individual conduct for evidence of skewed decisions, and I was happy to see that I had found none. Then I found this agreement.

The funding arrangement with HFA and the victory fund agreement was not illegal, but it sure looked unethical. If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead. This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party’s integrity.

maybe i just don't understand the real significance of this information

thinking in terms of real significance, that's your problem right there

what are you insinuating? that it is meaningless and just being used to re-litigate the primary with no new information? it definitely is unethical (using the DNC to subvert donors laws) and arguably using the DNC like that gave her an unfair advantage (in raising money) but the accusations of a rigged primary were more about rigging the individual state elections. is there evidence, for example, that hillary was involved with purging the voter rolls in NY?

attention grab first, political praxis of some obscure sort second, re-litigation of the primary third

The significant detail is the allegation that the agreement gave Hillary control of the DNC from back in August 2015. That's huge. If true.

"gave control" practically what does that mean? did she use that control to rig the primaries? or did she just use the DNC to launder money? was the DNC campaigning on her behalf? or doing anything on her behalf? the article mentions something about press releases needing to be run by Brooklyn. idk i wish Brazile had been more specific - this is just so vague (outside the fundraising charge).

also wasn't Brazile the person who "fed" Hillary the question about Flint, MI for the Flint debate? was she doing that bc Hillary controlled the DNC?

putting the DNC in hock to the Clinton campaign certainly seems like a situation that would cause other candidates to be de-prioritized.

The fact this is coming from Brazile, who I would consider a Clinton loyalist, is a pretty big deal.

According to the excerpt, the deal was more about the Clinton campaign helping keep the DNC afloat, rather than the DNC helping Clinton. It points to a mindblowingly incompetent DNC over the years.

Which on the other hand is why this doesn't prove 'Bernie would have won.' The DNC in this telling could't have rigged an election for dog catcher...

huh people are shocked that Hillary Clinton used a dodgy fundraising scheme exploiting her direct connections to party insiders. this is bad, wholly predictable, and exactly the kind of thing Bernie rails against when it comes to money in politics but it's also not the same as election rigging and I dunno if I really give a fuck at this point. The DNC has always been a cesspool.

you don't think the Clinton campaign keeping the DNC afloat would result in other candidates getting lesser treatment?

don't think anyone said this proves Bernie would have won.

xp

it might have - but then Brazile writes "I had tried to search out any other evidence of internal corruption that would show that the DNC was rigging the system to throw the primary to Hillary, but I could not find any in party affairs or among the staff. I had gone department by department, investigating individual conduct for evidence of skewed decisions, and I was happy to see that I had found none." which makes it sound like this fund raising scheme was the entirety of it. otherwise presumably she would've at least found some evidence of skewed decisions?

When I got back from a vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, I at last found the document that described it all: the Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America.

The agreement—signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.

literally nothing could "prove" BWHW

i'd feel differently about hillary purging voter roles during the primaries than i do about this fundraising agreement. maybe i shouldn't but one feels more like "rigging" to me.

That would be practical 'rigging', yes. This is apparently an agreement that the primaries should be rigged, but it's really hard to find anything at all that was in actual fact rigged.

It's like the opposite of Russian collusion. We have the agreement (apparently) but no evidence that anything actually happened.

BWHW

Brazile Withdraw Hillary Worship?

bew wave of heavy wetal

Bernie Sanders lost the 2016 primary by 3 million votes. That didn't happen exclusively because the DNC is/was corrupt.

— R.L. Stephens (@RLisDead) November 2, 2017

I can kind of see both sides on that one. I've never thought of the primary as "rigged." Bernie did come in as an upstart/outsider, and it's not totally surprising that the party machinery didn't fall in line behind him. That goes way beyond the DNC -- ha also barely picked up any endorsements from significant dems. His success was quite beyond my expectations. At the same time, it does seem like there's something seriously wrong with the way the DNC is run.

Oh, lol, no doubt about that :)

How does this agreement differ from the joint fundraising agreement Sanders signed with the DNC when he entered the race? (sorry if answered in anything linked/at work)

Dorothy Z.‏ @KTMWI4 3m
Replying to @RLisDead @daveweigel
I never want to hear Bernie's name again. I'm so tired of this.

Seth Pollack‏ @sethmpk 2m
Bad news: there's only like 100 senators so he's gonna keep coming up

loool

pretty nuts that one of only two major political parties in the world's largest democracy/economy is totally bankrupt and in debt.

i must say it doesn't really help the "governance" argument that the dems are trying to push

*competent governance

is it weird of me to read about the DNC's massive debt problems and then end up a little dumbfounded when the debt only amounted to $2 million? that's a lot more money than i'll ever see, but that's seriously like a rounding error on the net worth of many people in the democratic party

the DNC's debt problems are impossible to resolve. i mean, we could ask that one of our many really rich people to auction off a superyacht and then donate 10% of the proceeds to our debt problems, but that conversation would be so awkward, so...guess we'll go bankrupt and gnaw each other's faces off as we go down in flames

lol @ this story trending on Twitter

well Clinton-Sanders is Twitter's War of the Roses, no?

dumber things than this trend on twitter literally every day

good thread imho

― Simon H., Thursday, November 2, 2017 12:01 PM (thirty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea I think this is pretty important too. I've always found the "DNC rigged it against Bernie" narrative irritating because he lost by a large number, and most of the events cited in the leaked emails happened after he was mathematically eliminated. not saying the DNC isn't incredibly broken right now, but I think that context is important

Basically, the way I see it: on one hand, it's naive and silly to think the DNC would be a completely neutral arbiter between a party insider and an upstart outsider. OTOH, it's worth asking whether the system should work differently.

'political flacks have different opinions in private than on national TV during a campaign' seems like a rather obvious point Nate's missing https://t.co/YvgyVJ5GHn

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) November 2, 2017

lol @ this story trending on Twitter

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, November 2, 2017 1:31 PM (one hour ago)

lol ok buddy

I'm with Karl.

WOW. Elizabeth Warren just told @jaketapper that she believes that the DNC/Primary situation was rigged for Hillary Clinton.

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) November 2, 2017