US Politics: Let's Discuss US Politics

[IheartIheartTesla]

On 11/2/2017 at 2:51 PM, r'hllor's redrum lobster said:

i think you are missing the bigger implication here, in that a dnc party careerist seems to believe believe the the clinton/obama/center wing is toast and probably that sanders is likely to run again (further implication is she thinks he's got a good chance too)

That's probably true.

Most of the pushback I've been seeing in my limited exploration of this is that Bernie was No True Democrat so he wasn't owed anything by the party. Of course, that's sort of a garbage defense. The other thing to note is that it is irrelevant whether or not this Victory Defense Fund arrangement hurt or helped Sanders. Just don't do corrupt things, mmkay? The ends don't justify the means either.

Anyway, water under the bridge.

[The Wedge]

59 minutes ago, Zorral said:

 But if she hadn't been Bill's WIFE she'd never have been a senator from NY, whose voters she deserted quickly to run for POTUS nom, she wouldn't have been Sec of State and she wouldn't have gotten this nomination.

How did she abandon NY voters "quickly?"  She won her seat in 2000 and again in 2006, only leaving to become Secretary of State in 2009.

That's 8 years of service as a US Senator.  It's not like she jumped ship to become a paid TV pundit or resigned in some scandal. 

Sheesh.

[Mexal]

10 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I'm pessimistic enough to think that it doesn't fundamentally matter at this point. Even if the House is won by Dems, what does that do? I guess you could in theory impeach Trump, but that won't matter if it's done on a partisan level. It allows more investigations - but again, all partisan-based, with no Republicans going across the aisle. 

So long as we as a nation are accepting two sets of actual truth that diverge from each other in meaningful ways, there is no reasonable way to have a conversation with others. There is no basis for middle ground, no consensus, because there is no even basis of language. 

I was thinking earlier today that there are a couple of ways that this gets solved, neither are particularly good. The first is that the Truth rears up and is ugly, and forces people to acknowledge it. Climate change is an example; if the world is wracked by disaster after disaster, if Oklahoma gets essentially wrecked because of fracking, if Florida goes underwater - it doesn't matter if people say 'no, it's all fine'. They can't just handwave it away. 

The other possibility is a true, honest, splitting of the country. When you have essentially two rival groups of ethnic communitiies bound by similar values, goals, truths, traditions and information there is little else that can happen. Whether that would be a civil war that one side wins, or two sides splitting entirely apart, I'm not sure - but that conflict and resolution has to happen.

Maybe. I think having control of the investigations matters a great deal to what gets investigated and ultimately, what gets written in the report. I think Republicans on those committees will have a harder time distancing themselves from it when they're directly involved in a true investigation than they do now with the obstruction and ability to launch competing investigations to draw resources and drawn out Russia. 

But ultimately, I tend to fall into your pessimism. I think we're fucked and I'm having a hard time finding a line conservatives won't cross to keep power.

[OldGimletEye]

On 11/3/2017 at 3:28 PM, Mexal said:

America is facing an epistemic crisis: What if Mueller proves his case and it doesn’t matter?

I call this the case of the Post Modernist Conservative.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Kal, I respond to your post in a bit, but I just wanted to swing in drop this:

Quote

The Trump administration released a dire scientific report Friday detailing the growing threats of climate change. The report stands in stark contrast to the administration’s efforts to downplay humans’ role in global warming, withdraw from an international climate accord and reverse Obama-era policies aimed at curbing U.S. greenhouse-gas output.

The White House did not seek to prevent the release of the government’s National Climate Assessment, which is mandated by law, despite the fact that its findings sharply contradict the administration’s policies. The report affirms that climate change is driven almost entirely by human action, warns of potential sea-level rise as high as eight feet by the year 2100, and enumerates climate-related damage across the United States that is already occurring as a result of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit of global warming since 1900.

“It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century,” the document reports. “For the warming over the last century, there is no convincing alternative explanation supported by the extent of the observational evidence.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/11/03/trump-administration-releases-report-finds-no-convincing-alternative-explanation-for-climate-change/?utm_term=.ce395e540a9f

I wonder if he’ll tell Emperor President Xi Jinping to his face that climate change is a Chinese hoax……….

[Rorshach]

12 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Kal, I respond to your post in a bit, but I just wanted to swing in drop this:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/11/03/trump-administration-releases-report-finds-no-convincing-alternative-explanation-for-climate-change/?utm_term=.ce395e540a9f

I wonder if he’ll tell Emperor President Xi Jinping to his face that climate change is a Chinese hoax……….

Was wondering if it would come. It was delivered a couple of months ago. 

I follow one of the authors on Twitter (in addition to a couple of other climate scientists), so the conclusion was already known.

[ThinkerX]

Decided to play around with the numbers a bit on the Clinton/Sanders Money/Votes thing.

First, my sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries,_2016

https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/candidate?id=n00000528

https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/candidate?id=n00000019

 

AS OF 12 - 31- 2016

Not sure about the accuracy of the last two - or even Wiki for that matter, but presumably close enough.

Sanders raised $228,164,501, with $134,670,000 of that being small contributions, and about 97,000,000 being large contributions.  Only about $5600 came from PAC's.

Sanders garnered a total of 13,206,428 votes in the primaries. 

Dividing the one into the other, the Sanders crew spent a little over $17 per vote.

 

Clinton raised $563,756,928. About $399,700,000 of that came from individual contributions.  $1,785,000 came from PAC's and another $1,450,000 was self financed.  On top of that, there is $160,851,000 listed as coming from 'other sources' - perhaps the looting of the DNC, though that's just wild speculation on my part.

 

That money, POSSIBLY combined with her influence over the DNC garnered Clinton 16,914,722 primary votes (and a majority of the popular vote in the general. 

 

Interestingly, despite little personal wealth, almost nothing from PAC's, and a campaign launched with essentially zero prep work, Sanders did a damn impressive fundraising job, convincing millions of people to send him money.  Clinton beat that, but it took extensive prep work and subverting the DNC to do it. 

Speaking of the DNC.  Played a bit with the numbers mentioned in the 'tell-all' article.

DNC 'burn-rate' - 3.5 to 4 million a month or 42/48 million per year.  Registered Democrats account for something on the order of 60 million people...uhh...that should be pocket change.  Even if one democrat in ten - 6 million people, give or take, sent in a ten spot (lunch money) once a year to their local office, well, that's 60 million a year.  Granted, the national level DNC would steal most of it and blow it on pointless projects, but still...

 

That brings up another thing - republicans, specifically republican members of congress, and their obsession with pursuing legislation (AHCA and tax reform) that even most of their base despises.  They are doing this, or seem to, because that is where the money is.  Those contributions dry up, then perhaps the republican party fiscal situation is roughly on a par with the democrats. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

The other possibility is a true, honest, splitting of the country. When you have essentially two rival groups of ethnic communitiies bound by similar values, goals, truths, traditions and information there is little else that can happen. Whether that would be a civil war that one side wins, or two sides splitting entirely apart, I'm not sure - but that conflict and resolution has to happen.

November 4th, baby! Kill Whitey Day!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/01/far-right-conspiracy-theory-us-civil-war

 

https://videa.hu/videok/filmklub/film-animacio/eddie-murphy-kill-the-white-p-saturday-night-live-I9XglxRfwDg2AtNc

 

/This conspiracy needs a way better name. C'mon Cons, get on the stick.

[Fragile Bird]

How does that bastard keep getting away with calling Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas?

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

It was after the primaries had finished but before the convention, in June IIRC. And again, that might make Clinton's race more competitive, but it in no way hurts or does anything to Sanders. 

This is in response to Tywin e.g. al's question about when the Hillary Victory Fund started "laundering" donations to state parties to use for the campaign's benefit.

Now, I've already had my say on this, but lest Democrats start acting like Republicans, it's important that we back up our arguments with actual facts.

Here is the excerpt from Brazile's book in Politico. She states that the agreement the Clinton campaign made with the DNC was signed in August 2015, months before primary voting even started.

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.

[Mudguard]

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Not true, or not statistically true. The amount of Sanders supporters that supported Trump (or someone else) is virtually identical to the number of Clinton supporters who ended up voting for McCain, as an example - about 12%. 

I'd also love to hear how the DNC actually did affect, well, anything. It wasn't fundraising, right? Is it that they said they'd have 6 debates back in 2015 before any other candidates announced - which is the same amount as they had for Clinton/Obama? I'm really confused how, precisely, they actually put thumbs on scales.

Also note that democratic party members are at each other's throats while Trump is POTUS, pointing out the inherent difference of liberals and conservatives - which is that conservatives stay loyal to their ingroup, and liberals do not.

To your first point, even if 12 percent of of Clinton supporters in 2008 ended up voting for McCain, that doesn't prove that 12% of Sanders were going to support Trump, or that we should always expect 12% of the loser's supporters to end up voting for the Republican candidate.  The two events are not linked in any way that would allow you to make any quantitative inference on the behavior of Sanders supporters.

The new thing for 2016 regarding the debates was the penalty for participating in unsanctioned debates.

Quote

Will Clinton end up debating in non-sanctioned debates? That’s what usually happens, but it looks less likely this time for two reasons. In previous years, there wasn’t a penalty for showing up in non-sanctioned debates. This year, the DNC is threatening to bar candidates who participate in unsanctioned debates from the sanctioned ones. Also, Clinton is the strongest nonincumbent front-runner in the modern era. She has less incentive to put herself out there and make a potentially fatal mistake.

As we now know, Clinton was running the DNC and was essentially coming up with all these rules.  Only after a massive amount of backlash and negative press did Clinton agree to accept 4 having four additional debates.  What's even more wrong, was that Clinton hid behind the DNC as the bad actor coming up with these rules, when if fact, Clinton was running it.  This type of unnecessary shady behavior, even if legal, is why some Democrats are turned off about politics and end up staying home when they really need to be out voting.

[Kalbear]

Just now, The Great Unwashed said:

This is in response to Tywin e.g. al's question about when the Hillary Victory Fund started "laundering" donations to state parties to use for the campaign's benefit.

Now, I've already had my say on this, but lest Democrats start acting like Republicans, it's important that we back up our arguments with actual facts.

Here is the excerpt from Brazile's book in Politico. She states that the agreement the Clinton campaign made with the DNC was signed in August 2015, months before primary voting even started.

 

That's when the deal was made, but actual funding going through HVF to states and vice versa didn't happen until Juneish 2016, or so I thought.

Turns out we're both wrong, and the deal was done in September 2015 and the first actual events weren't until December. June 2016 was when WaPo broke the story about it being shady. 

Now, here's the part that isn't shady: the donations going to it were in no way intended for the states, and it's not like she was funneling money away from the states. The donations she got from big donors were always going to be for that campaign, and this was a legal if completely fucking shady way of getting bigger donations. 

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

To your first point, even if 12 percent of of Clinton supporters in 2008 ended up voting for McCain, that doesn't prove that 12% of Sanders were going to support Trump, or that we should always expect 12% of the loser's supporters to end up voting for the Republican candidate.  The two events are not linked in any way that would allow you to make any quantitative inference on the behavior of Sanders supporters.

I didn't say that they were linked; I'm saying simply that the number of Sanders supporters who voted for not Clinton was well within prior election results. The notion that Sanders supporters defected because Clinton was shady is not supported by the data directly. 

4 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

The new thing for 2016 regarding the debates was the penalty for participating in unsanctioned debates.

As we now know, Clinton was running the DNC and was essentially coming up with all these rules.  Only after a massive amount of backlash and negative press did Clinton agree to accept 4 having four additional debates. 

Citation needed. Most of the debates had been scheduled, and one of the big issues at the time was that Sanders demanded very specific times and dates that also happened to interfere with Clinton times. 

4 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

What's even more wrong, was that Clinton hid behind the DNC as the bad actor coming up with these rules, when if fact, Clinton was running it.  This type of unnecessary shady behavior, even if legal, is why some Democrats are turned off about politics and end up staying home when they really need to be out voting.

Again, citation needed, especially since ya know the 'revelation' that Clinton was running things didn't come out as a statement until two days ago. If Sanders supporters are staying home because of information that comes out 10 months after the election, they've got a lot more power than I realize.

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, The Wedge said:

How did she abandon NY voters "quickly?"  She won her seat in 2000 and again in 2006, only leaving to become Secretary of State in 2009.

That's 8 years of service as a US Senator.  It's not like she jumped ship to become a paid TV pundit or resigned in some scandal. 

Sheesh.

She was spending more time fund-raising and raising support for her POTUS Nom run than taking care of NY.  This is when she lost my support.  She promised us she wouldn't do that.

 You think she was doing a lot of thinking about NY while fighting Obama for every primary vote?  What do you think running for a presidential nomination involves?  Especially when one is regarded by eveyone including herself as the front runner?  Look at what she was doing and where she was during her latest debacle primary campaign, where she was seen by everyone including herself as the shoe-in. 

This time she bought the shoe -- or made sure nobody else had shoes.  Or something.  What a garbled metaphor I've made for myself!  O well, it's Friday evening after one hell of week on every level.  

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

That's when the deal was made, but actual funding going through HVF to states and vice versa didn't happen until Juneish 2016, or so I thought.

Turns out we're both wrong, and the deal was done in September 2015 and the first actual events weren't until December. June 2016 was when WaPo broke the story about it being shady. 

Now, here's the part that isn't shady: the donations going to it were in no way intended for the states, and it's not like she was funneling money away from the states. The donations she got from big donors were always going to be for that campaign, and this was a legal if completely fucking shady way of getting bigger donations. 

I think the HVF donations have already been litigated to death. The key point of these new revelations is not the HVF; it's that the HVF agreement permitted the Clinton campaign to essentially control the DNC by stipulating that the campaign had full control over staff hirings, strategies, mailers, etc. 

And that money was intended to go to the 32 state parties that signed up for the HVF. Campaign finance rules allow $10,000 to be donated to each state party, so $320,000 of those $356,000 checks being written to the HVF was supposed to be distributed to the state parties, but ultimately wasn't.

[Mudguard]

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I didn't say that they were linked; I'm saying simply that the number of Sanders supporters who voted for not Clinton was well within prior election results. The notion that Sanders supporters defected because Clinton was shady is not supported by the data directly. 

Citation needed. Most of the debates had been scheduled, and one of the big issues at the time was that Sanders demanded very specific times and dates that also happened to interfere with Clinton times. 

Again, citation needed, especially since ya know the 'revelation' that Clinton was running things didn't come out as a statement until two days ago. If Sanders supporters are staying home because of information that comes out 10 months after the election, they've got a lot more power than I realize.

Regarding the debates, I already provided a citation for the new rule that penalized participation in unsanctioned debates.  If you want a citation for the pressure put on Clinton to do more debates, here's one:

Quote

Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley criticized the number of DNC debates, saying that there should have been more debates.^[93][94] The DNC had scheduled six debates, the same number it had scheduled in the previous two contested primaries, 2004 and 2008.^[95] Democratic Party candidates are not formally allowed to participate in non-sanctioned debates if they want to participate in the official DNC debates.^[96] However, that rule is unenforceable if candidates jointly agree to additional debates or if the sanctioned debates are already over, as was the case in 2016 and in previous years when additional debates were scheduled.^[97]

Criticism over the number of debates reached a peak at the DNC's national meeting in Minneapolis on August 28. State Senator Martha Fuller Clark, vice chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, reportedly had an "intense discussion" about the number of debates with DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.^[98] During the national meeting, candidate Martin O'Malley criticized DNC officials for the lack of debates. Cecil Benjamin, chair of the Democratic Party of the US Virgin Islands, interrupted the meeting to offer a motion to increase the number of debates; the motion received applause and cheers from the audience.^[99]

In early September, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and former Mayor of Minneapolis R. T. Rybak released a statement calling for more debates and for releasing the restrictions imposed to keep candidates from participating in non-DNC debates.^[100] Former DNC chair Howard Dean expressed his disappointment in the rule barring candidates from non-DNC debates, saying "It's not right."^[101] A small protest took place outside the DNC headquarters in Washington DC on September 16 calling for more debates.^[102] On September 18, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi echoed calls for more debates in an interview with The Los Angeles Times.^[103]

On September 19, 2015, during her speech at the New Hampshire Democratic Party convention, DNC chair Wasserman Schultz was heckled with shouts for more debates.^[104] On September 22, the Vermont Democratic Party sent a letter to the DNC calling for more debates.^[105]

This was all well known.

Regarding your last citation request, I clearly was talking about the present since I used the present tense and not the past tense.  I'm said that this type of shady and corrupt behavior is turning off Democrats now, which ends up causing them to stay home.  Read it again.

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

I think the HVF donations have already been litigated to death. The key point of these new revelations is not the HVF; it's that the HVF agreement permitted the Clinton campaign to essentially control the DNC by stipulating that the campaign had full control over staff hirings, strategies, mailers, etc. 

And that money was intended to go to the 32 state parties that signed up for the HVF. Campaign finance rules allow $10,000 to be donated to each state party, so $320,000 of those $356,000 checks being written to the HVF was supposed to be distributed to the state parties, but ultimately wasn't.

Yep, all of that is true, but it isn't showing me how Clinton's control of the DNC actually mattered in this regard with respect to beating Sanders.

2 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

Regarding the debates, I already provided a citation for the new rule that penalized participation in unsanctioned debates.  If you want a citation for the pressure put on Clinton to do more debates, here's one:

Clinton didn't end up agreeing to more debates than the 6 that were scheduled, however. You cited that she only agreed to more debates after massive backlash, when what happened was that they had debates scheduled, Sanders said 'nope, that doesn't work', and then they finally worked things out later.

But they didn't do any more than the 6 debates.

The sanctioned/unsanctioned thing hardly matters anyway, given that Clinton would have told Sanders to fuck off.

2 minutes ago, Mudguard said:

Regarding your last citation request, I clearly was talking about the present since I used the present tense and not the past tense.  I'm said that this type of shady and corrupt behavior is turning off Democrats now, which ends up causing them to stay home.  Read it again.

Okay, then in that case there's another citation needed, as there's very little evidence of Democrats staying home in off-year elections and a TON of evidence indicating that Democrats are turning out in much greater numbers than they have before for off-year elections.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

30 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

How does that bastard keep getting away with calling Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas?

We have a football team named the Redskins and a baseball team with a super racist mascot, among other things. Many Americans simply don't care about the native peoples and what was done to them. Hell, we have a holiday that celebrates a genocidal moron. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

I think at this point it's fair to say that the Clinton's have pretty much left a level of soap scum or detritus on just about anything they've touched politically. I used to think that it was fair to say that Hillary had been unfairly painted with Bill's crimes, but I don't think that cover holds anymore. I think it's fair to say that theirs is a symbiotic relationship.   

[Kalbear]

Oh hey, here's the actual memo text from the Clinton/DNC deal:

Quote

 

However, the memo also made clear that the arrangement pertained to only the general election, not the primary season, and it left open the possibility that it would sign similar agreements with other candidates.

"Nothing in this agreement shall be construed to violate the DNC's obligation of impartiality and neutrality through the Nominating process. All activities performed under this agreement will be focused exclusively on preparations for the General Election and not the Democratic Primary," the memo states.

"Further we understand you may enter into similar agreements with other candidates," it continues.

 

Wow, that sounds SUPER shady.