Progressives see a leader in Bernie Sanders as they prepare to fight back

[portlander23]

Progressives see a leader in Bernie Sanders as they prepare to fight back
Lauren Gambino and Adam Gabbatt
The Guardian

“Progressives are used to punching up, but here we find ourselves in a real position of credibility and power,” said Raul Grijalva of Arizona, a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive caucus.

“Right now we are fighting for the chair of the DNC and it is truly emblematic of the division within the Democrats,” said RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of the National Nurses United, which endorsed Sanders during the primary. “If the Democratic party rejects the Sanders base, it will be at their extreme peril.”

On a tactical level, all eyes are on 2018 and how to elect progressives to seats at the local, state and national level.

“We have to do in 2018 what the Tea Party did in 2010,” said Dan Cantor, the founder and executive director of the Working Families party.

[JHan]

1. Translation: If we don't get the DNC chair we want, fk the Democratic Party.

[think]

2. After what the DNC did last year you can bet it's a very touchy subject....

[Gothmog]

3. You got to be kidding

The DNC did not fix the nomination process hurt the Clinton campaign. That claim was false http://www.newsweek.com/myths-cost-democrats-presidential-election-521044

Easily the most ridiculous argument this year was that the DNC was some sort of monolith that orchestrated the nomination of Hillary Clinton against the will of “the people.” This was immensely popular with the Bernie-or-Busters, those who declared themselves unwilling to vote for Clinton under any circumstances because the Democratic primary had been rigged (and how many of these people laughed when Trump started moaning about election rigging?). The notion that the fix was in was stupid, as were the people who believed it.

Start with this: The DNC, just like the Republican National Committee, is an impotent organization with very little power. It is composed of the chair and vice chair of the Democratic parties of each state, along with over 200 members elected by Democrats. What it does is fundraise, organize the Democratic National Convention and put together the party platform. It handles some organizational activity but tries to hold down its expenditures during the primaries; it has no authority to coordinate spending with any candidate until the party’s nominee is selected. This was why then-President Richard Nixon reacted with incredulity when he heard that some of his people had ordered a break-in at the DNC offices at the Watergate; he couldn’t figure out what information anyone would want out of such a toothless organization.....

According to a Western European intelligence source, Russian hackers, using a series of go-betweens, transmitted the DNC emails to WikiLeaks with the intent of having them released on the verge of the Democratic Convention in hopes of sowing chaos. And that’s what happened—just a couple of days before Democrats gathered in Philadelphia, the emails came out, and suddenly the media was loaded with stories about trauma in the party. Crews of Russian propagandists—working through an array of Twitter accounts and websites, started spreading the story that the DNC had stolen the election from Sanders. (An analysis provided to Newsweek by independent internet and computer specialists using a series of algorithms show that this kind of propaganda, using the same words, went from Russian disinformation sources to comment sections on more than 200 sites catering to liberals, conservatives, white supremacists, nutritionists and an amazing assortment of other interest groups.) The fact that the dates of the most controversial emails—May 3, May 4, May 5, May 9, May 16, May 17, May 18, May 21—were after it was impossible for Sanders to win was almost never mentioned, and was certainly ignored by the propagandists trying to sell the “primaries were rigged” narrative. (Yes, one of them said something inappropriate about his religious beliefs. So a guy inside the DNC was a jerk; that didn’t change the outcome.) Two other emails—one from April 24 and May 1—were statements of fact. In the first, responding to Sanders saying he would push for a contested convention (even though he would not have the delegates to do so), a DNC official wrote, “So much for a traditional presumptive nominee.” Yeah, no kidding. The second stated that Sanders didn’t know what the DNC’s job actually was—which he didn’t, apparently because he had not ever been a Democrat before his run.

Bottom line: The “scandalous” DNC emails were hacked by people working with the Kremlin, then misrepresented online by Russian propagandists to gullible fools who never checked the dates of the documents. And the media, which in the flurry of breathless stories about the emails would occasionally mention that they were all dated after any rational person knew the nomination was Clinton’s, fed into the misinformation.

In the real world, here is what happened: Clinton got 16.9 million votes in the primaries, compared with 13.2 million for Sanders. The rules were never changed to stop him, even though Sanders supporters started calling for them to be changed as his losses piled up.

I was a delegate to the national convention and I saw much of this silliness first hand. This election was winnable but the sanders campaign did a great deal of damage that is the subject of valid commentary

[think]

5. Donna Brazile is totally not sorry for leaking CNN debate questions to Hillary Clinton

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/07/donna-brazile-is-totally-not-sorry-for-leaking-cnn-debate-questions-to-hillary-clinton/?utm_term=.ad41f5e9c439


Shall we go on?

[frankieallen]

10. She did alot of damage to Clinton when this came to light, in my opinion.

She's a bold face lier, and not a very good one. I thought her attempts to cast herself as a "christian woman being persecuted" were embarrassing. Her excuse? "those emails were stolen"!
She hurt the Clinton campaign as much as anyone did, making them look like cheaters who would do anything to win. How is she still part of the DNC?
pathetic.

[JHan]

12. Do you believe Donna Brazile is the only person to get a debate question this year?

And what was the debate question?- about water pollution during the debates in Flint- how shocking.

She is not sorry because she knows this is a thing in politics. CNN's outrage was all noise signifying nothing.

The real outrage is not that Donna got hold of a question, the outrage is the close relationship between the media and political operatives. What we should be clamoring for is changing the debate format, ideally getting the debates out of the hands of corporate media.

[think]

14. Agree we should want the control out of the hands of corporate media. But Brazile was a top member

of the DNC.

Her actions should not be excused either.

The DNC was suppose to represent the party not one candidate.

[JHan]

16. Her actions were inexcusable but I (Also) don't see them as particularly heinous..

or shocking or making any kind of difference - the questions themselves are eye roll worthy- I mean I could have told Donna Clinton would get a question about water pollution in Flint.

By focusing on her, we miss the point we both agree on - changing the debate format and who controls those debates.

[demmiblue]

7. Indeed.

It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if the playing field had been level.

I was a Sanders supporter, but I would have liked to have heard/seen more of O'Malley. A robust and fair primary is important for the health of our party, imo.

But, ya know, turns and everything.

[Gothmog]

9. Sanders only got 43% of the vote in the primaries

The DNC had nothing to do with the fact that Jewish, African American and Latino voters rejected him. Sanders was rejected by Jewish, African American and Latino votes. Sanders did not come close to getting enough votes.
http://pleasecutthecrap.com/a-message-for-hardcore-bernie-stans/

Hillary Cinton won the nomination because of democracy. She received more than 57% of Democratic votes cast. Bernie Sanders virtually only won caucuses, which are the least democratic aspect of the primary process. And most of those he won only because she decided to save her money for the General election. He won very few primaries, except for his “home states” and Michigan and his clock was cleaned in virtually every other state that mattered. Demographically, he only won white liberals. The fact that YOU think he made it close, or only lost because of “Super Delegates” is a hallmark of your delusion. Bernie Stans largely didn’t seem to notice that she reached out to you repeatedly and you bit her hand off, making you more like Republicans than you should be comfortable with.

Sanders could not win the popular vote and was in the process only due to caucuses

[JudyM]

11. Heavens, no! A robust primary can expose weaknesses in candidates!

[JHan]

13. This is what it sounds like to me:

Framing Perez as some symbol of what's wrong with the party is a way to trash the President, and erect a "guilt by association" standard that I want nothing to do with...

Now, anyone who is supported by the President is "the problem"- Anyone who the Clintonistas like is "the problem" which will morph into "anyone who disagrees with us is the problem" - Tea Partiers are raving lunatics because they are blinded by their ideology, I don't want a Democratic version of them.

[Gothmog]

4. Has Sanders changed his FEC filing to run as a Democrat for Senate in 2018?

[Me.]

6. Of Course Not

For all the talk about his so-called integrity he still doesn't walk his talk and btw where are those tax returns.

[Gothmog]

8. I am also still waiting for Sanders tax returns

[LWolf]

15. And that's a great thing.

It gives the Democratic Party a chance to stand for something again.