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Salon: We Must Smash the Clinton Machine: Elites Want to Stifle Debate
We must smash the Clinton machine: Democratic elites and the media sold out to Hillary this time, but change is coming
Neoliberals, D.C. careerists and the pundits lined up this time. They won't be able to rig contests moving forward
Bill Curry
The Democratic establishment is putting all the heat it can on Bernie Sanders to drop his weapons and put his hands where we can see them. This includes the media establishment. Last Monday Politico ran a piece headlined “Democrats to Sanders: Time to wind it down,” quoting a bunch of senators who said Bernie could stay in so long as he talks just about stuff he and Hillary agree on. (Claire McCaskill: “If the contrast is about what separates us from Donald Trump, then I think it’s fine.”) If they can’t end the race, they’ll settle for ending the debate.
snip
..... three Obama cabinet secretaries — Agriculture’s Tom Vilsack, HUD’s Julian Castro and Labor’s Thomas Perez — backed Clinton early, thus shepherding whole economic sectors into her camp. At Obama’s DNC, ethically challenged Debbie Wasserman Schultz brazenly violates party rules by daily rigging the game for Clinton.
Sanders often says he took on “the most powerful political machine in America,” by which he means the Clintons. He’s really fighting the whole Democratic Party: White House, Congress, DNC, elite media and, sad to say, national progressive groups. That includes organized labor but also nearly every liberal lobby in town. He’s been a more constant friend than Hillary Clinton to almost all of them — but he must face and defeat them all. That he’s done so in 14 states — 15 counting Iowa-and fought four more to a draw is a miracle — and a sign their days are truly numbered.
snip
With each call to surrender, Sanders just gets stronger. The day the Politico story ran, he swept Democrats Abroad 69 percent to 30 percent. The next day Hillary took Arizona with 58 percent of the vote but Sanders blew her out in Idaho and Utah, polling an unheard-of 79 percent in caucuses that shattered turnout records. On Saturday he’d chalked up three more wins in Alaska, Hawaii and Washington with average margins of 76 perfent. In a Times/CBS poll out this week the man who started the race 60 points down closed the gap to five. In a Bloomberg poll released Saturday he took a 1 point lead.
It raises a question that the elites who rig rules, stifle debate and call on Sanders to withdraw must answer: Who do you think you are? It also raises a question for Washington-based organizations allegedly safeguarding progressive values: What have you done? With all her money, contacts and celebrity and full, albeit covert support of her president and party, Clinton needed every last liberal endorsement to survive Iowa, Nevada, Missouri, Illinois and Massachusetts. How did she get them? If those endorsements don’t strike you as at least counterintuitive, ponder the record:
Clinton backed NAFTA and the TPP, dithered on the minimum wage and still doesn’t support a living wage. Why would labor help her defeat a man who never once left its side on these and countless other vital issues?
She backed the Defense of Marriage Act in the ’90s, opposed same-sex marriage till 2013 and recently recalled Nancy Reagan as a hero of the AIDS crisis. The Human Rights Campaign may be the bravest and most loyal of all liberal lobbies. Why abandon a stalwart ally like Sanders for one who dithered and dodged on every tough issue?
From Sister Souljah in 1992 to Barack Obama in 2008, the Clinton record on racial politics is highly mixed. She backed the Clinton/Gingrich welfare bill that left millions of African Americans in poverty and the Clinton crime bill that landed millions more in jail. Why did a PAC run in the name of the Congressional Black Caucus pick her over a guy who went to jail to protest segregated housing?
snip
This ideology is bipartisan. Without the full support of Democratic elites, NAFTA, the TPP, the Iraq war, Wall Street deregulation, every revolving door and no bid contract, every cut ever made to Social Security or Medicare, would be impossible. The culture wars we so loudly deplore are mostly a sideshow staged by political elites to hold onto their base while conducting their business. This election exposes the real divide in American politics, the one separating us from them.
snpi
Six months later he still beats her in every general election poll; her people still dismisses the polls. She says Republicans haven’t attacked him yet, but she sure has. The result: people like her less and him more.
snip
http://www.salon.com/2016/03/29/we_must_smash_the_clinton_machine_democratic_elites_and_the_media_sold_out_to_hillary_this_time_but_change_is_coming/
Neoliberals, D.C. careerists and the pundits lined up this time. They won't be able to rig contests moving forward
Bill Curry
The Democratic establishment is putting all the heat it can on Bernie Sanders to drop his weapons and put his hands where we can see them. This includes the media establishment. Last Monday Politico ran a piece headlined “Democrats to Sanders: Time to wind it down,” quoting a bunch of senators who said Bernie could stay in so long as he talks just about stuff he and Hillary agree on. (Claire McCaskill: “If the contrast is about what separates us from Donald Trump, then I think it’s fine.”) If they can’t end the race, they’ll settle for ending the debate.
snip
..... three Obama cabinet secretaries — Agriculture’s Tom Vilsack, HUD’s Julian Castro and Labor’s Thomas Perez — backed Clinton early, thus shepherding whole economic sectors into her camp. At Obama’s DNC, ethically challenged Debbie Wasserman Schultz brazenly violates party rules by daily rigging the game for Clinton.
Sanders often says he took on “the most powerful political machine in America,” by which he means the Clintons. He’s really fighting the whole Democratic Party: White House, Congress, DNC, elite media and, sad to say, national progressive groups. That includes organized labor but also nearly every liberal lobby in town. He’s been a more constant friend than Hillary Clinton to almost all of them — but he must face and defeat them all. That he’s done so in 14 states — 15 counting Iowa-and fought four more to a draw is a miracle — and a sign their days are truly numbered.
snip
With each call to surrender, Sanders just gets stronger. The day the Politico story ran, he swept Democrats Abroad 69 percent to 30 percent. The next day Hillary took Arizona with 58 percent of the vote but Sanders blew her out in Idaho and Utah, polling an unheard-of 79 percent in caucuses that shattered turnout records. On Saturday he’d chalked up three more wins in Alaska, Hawaii and Washington with average margins of 76 perfent. In a Times/CBS poll out this week the man who started the race 60 points down closed the gap to five. In a Bloomberg poll released Saturday he took a 1 point lead.
It raises a question that the elites who rig rules, stifle debate and call on Sanders to withdraw must answer: Who do you think you are? It also raises a question for Washington-based organizations allegedly safeguarding progressive values: What have you done? With all her money, contacts and celebrity and full, albeit covert support of her president and party, Clinton needed every last liberal endorsement to survive Iowa, Nevada, Missouri, Illinois and Massachusetts. How did she get them? If those endorsements don’t strike you as at least counterintuitive, ponder the record:
Clinton backed NAFTA and the TPP, dithered on the minimum wage and still doesn’t support a living wage. Why would labor help her defeat a man who never once left its side on these and countless other vital issues?
She backed the Defense of Marriage Act in the ’90s, opposed same-sex marriage till 2013 and recently recalled Nancy Reagan as a hero of the AIDS crisis. The Human Rights Campaign may be the bravest and most loyal of all liberal lobbies. Why abandon a stalwart ally like Sanders for one who dithered and dodged on every tough issue?
From Sister Souljah in 1992 to Barack Obama in 2008, the Clinton record on racial politics is highly mixed. She backed the Clinton/Gingrich welfare bill that left millions of African Americans in poverty and the Clinton crime bill that landed millions more in jail. Why did a PAC run in the name of the Congressional Black Caucus pick her over a guy who went to jail to protest segregated housing?
snip
This ideology is bipartisan. Without the full support of Democratic elites, NAFTA, the TPP, the Iraq war, Wall Street deregulation, every revolving door and no bid contract, every cut ever made to Social Security or Medicare, would be impossible. The culture wars we so loudly deplore are mostly a sideshow staged by political elites to hold onto their base while conducting their business. This election exposes the real divide in American politics, the one separating us from them.
snpi
Six months later he still beats her in every general election poll; her people still dismisses the polls. She says Republicans haven’t attacked him yet, but she sure has. The result: people like her less and him more.
snip
http://www.salon.com/2016/03/29/we_must_smash_the_clinton_machine_democratic_elites_and_the_media_sold_out_to_hillary_this_time_but_change_is_coming/