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If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

People are complicated. Love is not.

I was promised a recession.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Joe Lieberman disappointingly reemerged to remind us that he’s still alive.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

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We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Late-Night Open Thread: ‘Our’ Revolution Will Not Be Well-Organized

Late-Night Open Thread: ‘Our’ Revolution Will Not Be Well-Organized

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Jeff Weaver seems to have trouble making new friends. From Alex Seitz-Wald’s comprehensive NBC.com article:

As Bernie Sanders prepares to launch an organization meant to carry on his presidential campaign’s political revolution, it’s been jolted by legal questions, abrupt leadership changes and mass resignations.

The group, dubbed Our Revolution, is set to debut Wednesday evening. But eight of the group’s 13 or so staffers resigned over the weekend after former campaign manager Jeff Weaver was brought in to run the group. The remaining staffers, some of whom stayed for personal reasons, all sent letters to Sanders expressing concerns with Weaver and solidarity with those who quit.

The departures were first reported by Politico and BuzzFeed, but new details uncovered by NBC News from multiple sources close to matter reveal the depth of the turmoil inside the organization that controls Sanders’ lucrative email fundraising list and which many progressives hope will become a powerful force on the left wing of the Democratic Party…

Weaver and his defenders say political campaigns need decisive leadership and clear chains of command, and that he while me might be tough, he was also effective in pushing Sanders to surpass all expectations in the Democratic Primary… And Weaver has the confidence of Sanders himself, who disregarded the objections in elevating him.

But the fallout over Weaver’s hiring has wiped out nearly all of Our Revolution’s former staff… The group’s entire organizing team quit, as did much of its digital team — the group’s two pillars — including longtime Sanders digital director Kenneth Pennington, who sparred often with Weaver on the campaign. Several of the staffers who resigned had received personal promises from Sanders that Weaver would not be involved, and he later called several to try to get them to stay, unsuccessfully, according to multiple sources…

Before they left, the organizing team helped find 2,500 people to host house parties across the country so Sanders supporters could listen to the senator deliver a live-streamed speech announcing the launch of Our Revolution Wednesday evening.

But the organizing team left before they could fully promote the event, raising doubts about how many people will actually show up. Revolution Messaging has stepped in to help advertise the kickoff and Weaver said he’s not worried about attendance.

Senator Sanders certainly has a loyal and dedicated fan base, but… Politico:

… Our Revolution is aiming to have a long term impact on races all the way down to the most local. They say they’re hoping to start this year, getting the voters activated by Sanders involved in Senate, House and other campaigns.

But Sanders himself has yet to campaign for any candidates whatsoever aside from one rally for Eric Kingson — a New York House hopeful who subsequently lost his primary to the Democratic party’s favored contender.

Sanders’ attempts to get his work for other candidates off the ground has already been sputtering. Around the time he campaigned for Kingson, for example, Zephyr Teachout specifically asked him not to come and campaign for her until he ironed out his eventual endorsement of Hillary Clinton…

If the Senator isn’t careful, people might start saying he’s only doing this as a way of keeping himself in front of the national media. Per Buzzfeed:

… Sanders announced the group about a month ago in an interview with USA Today, promising that it would help boost a range of at least 100 progressive candidates running for office this year, from school board to congressional campaigns.

The group has yet to make clear what its exact focus will be or in what way it will approach fundraising and advertising.

In the same interview, Sanders also signaled that he would launch two additional groups — a second focusing on campaign advertising and a third structured as an “education” group called the Sanders Institute. The senator and his aides have not spoken further about plans for efforts outside the existing 501©(4) organization…

Big plans. At least the news of defections explains yesterday’s Observer trolling… this isn’t the first time Weaver’s gone around the usual channels to defend his own ‘turf’.

Reader Interactions

55Comments

  2. 2.

    Adam L Silverman

    Didn’t mean to bigfoot you. Didn’t see you composing when I started the earthquake post. I’m going to bed.

  3. 3.

    David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch

    The guy running against Keyser Söze Debbie Wasserman Schultz was on Maddow tonight saying Sanders stabbed him in the back.

    Sanders won’t raise any money for him or campaign for him. Sanders refuses to even take his phone calls.

    Maddow was pissed that Sanders has only raised a measly pittance of 300K for down ticket socialists running this November.

  4. 4.

    Gwangung

    Sorry, but this mess is precisely the reason why I considered Sanders the inferior candidate.

    Good goals, but can’t administer his way out of a wet paper bag. Even Trump would have eaten him alive.

    He’s pissed away all his political capital and any chance to initiate any lasting change on the left hand side of the street. Which REALLY pisses me off…

  5. 5.

    HL Guy

    Weaver is an awful, nightmare of a man. This was apparent when Hillary won all the delegates she needed to win and he went on the teevee and said “We’re gonna KEEP ON FIGHTIN'” because we’re freakin’ idiots.

    And Bernie’s inability to let him go far, far way makes him even worse.

  7. 7.

    David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch

    The 1988 vintage, 2,700 square foot, $550,000 house, located on a cul-de-sac in a subdivision just off a major highway, is also the legal address for a media company that was created on April 8, 2014, Old Towne Media LLC. It is not clear as to who actually owns Old Towne Media LLC, but what is clear is that it is located in Shelli Hutton-Hartig’s home. Working out of the home alongside Hutton-Hartig is Barbara Abar Bougie. Both are very close friends of Jane O’Meara Sanders. Collectively, they were responsible for close to $90 million in revenue that came to the company from the Sanders presidential campaign.

    This may fully explain why Sanders refused to release his back taxes returns and financial disclosure form.

    This company gets a 15% commission for placing ads. 15% of 90 million is $13.5 million dollars.

    Is Jane Sanders a partner with her dear friends in this unknown firm? Did Sanders, through his wife, pocket 4 to 5 million dollars of poor people’s money?

    This looks no different than televangelists who bilk desperate people out of their hard earned money. Sad.

  9. 9.

    nutella

    The worst part of all this, to me, is that enthusiastic new lefty organizers have been driven away by that miserable scum Bernie Sanders. And in the tackiest way: He promised them something very specific (Jeff Weaver would not be hired by this new organization) and then he hired him anyway. They know they can’t trust Bernie not to stab them in the back now. That’s got to make these promising, hard-working organizers bitter.

  13. 13.

    Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again)

    As with all other things Sanders, I am shocked. Shocked, I say.

  14. 14.

    Barb2

    Bernie’s ego.

    The shoutie old man. He really doesn’t care about his followers.

    He has always been a one trick pony – unable to work with others. Working with others in order to get stuff done is hard work.

    Seems like he’s trying to keep his movement going so that Jane can work her con.

    Lots of “I told you so.” He never was a Democrat.” He is a nothing with a mailing list worth big bucks. Jane’s hands must be itching.

  15. 15.

    James E Powell

    I might be out of line here, but out of respect for deceased horses everywhere, can we just let Sanders go back into the shadows from where he came?

  17. 17.

    Amir Khalid

    @James E Powell:
    This isn’t about the presidential campaign anymore. This is about the kind of leader Bernie wants to be for the progressive movement in America from here on out. He certainly seems to want to lead, but does he have the integrity and the skills? People are starting to have suspicions about the former. Bringing a divisive figure like Jeff Weaver into his new organisation suggests he might be lacking in the latter too.

  18. 18.

    LosGatosCA

    Shocking developments. What else did anyone expect? Maybe Warren can salvage something by hiring these folks and developing something with sustainability – visible, funded, staffed.

    Make the primary issue student loans to keep the youngsters involved.

    ETA: long term focus on registration and get out the midterm vote.

  20. 20.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Let him fail. Sanders wasn’t the ‘left’ or ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ candidate, he was the sound bite economic populism candidate. Obama pushed the Democratic Party to the left, and Hillary is continuing that, with broad increased infrastructure investment, civil rights, business regulation, and help for the poor. Obama couldn’t get credit for his accomplishments, and Hillary is well on the way to receiving the same treatment. Sheesh.

  21. 21.

    Shalimar

    @LosGatosCA: This sounds like a good time for lots of people to email Warren with this story and say “please start the desperately needed progressive grassroots organization that Bernie is too incompetent to start.”

  22. 22.

    Shalimar

    @Frankensteinbeck: Screw Bernie. He deserves to fail. But the people he was leading can either be a positive force or become disenchanted with politics. They are worth the effort, even though the dreamWeaver is not.

  23. 23.

    Vlad

    Zephyr Teachout has reasonable positions on some issues, but in spite of her academic credentials, she’s still an absolute nincompoop. I still remember all the way back in 2005, when people on this very site were ripping her into fine shreds over her incessant bleating about how it was imperative that all bloggers be compelled to sign a code of ethics.

    It’s certainly possible that there’s something rotten in the Sanders team, but not wanting to be associated with Teachout isn’t evidence of it.

  24. 24.

    Applejinx

    @Amir Khalid: Well, that sucks. Guess Hillary Clinton is just going to have to be the progressive leader Bernie can’t be.

    Or, yes, Warren. But why not Hillary?

  26. 26.

    MattF

    Well, it looks like those nice young people are getting a lesson about politics. And about politicians. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. So, can we now please move on?

  27. 27.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    A lot of us were interested in whether Sanders would keep all those earnest young people engaged. His attempt to transition his campaign into a lasting movement just died. The question now is where will those disappointed activists go while Bernie fades into the woodwork.

  28. 28.

    Vlad

    @Peale: From the quoted bit of the Politico excerpt:

    “Sanders’ attempts to get his work for other candidates off the ground has already been sputtering. Around the time he campaigned for Kingson, for example, Zephyr Teachout specifically asked him not to come and campaign for her until he ironed out his eventual endorsement of Hillary Clinton…”

  29. 29.

    msdc

    @Vlad: Which means it’s Teachout who didn’t want to be involved with Sanders. Which should tell you something.

  30. 30.

    PsiFighter37

    Killing the baby before it even has a chance to try and leave the crib. Sad!

    In all seriousness, Bernie gets what he deserves. He’s in line to become the next Budget Committee chairman (I think) if the Democrats retake the Senate, which bothers me a bit.

  32. 32.

    L Boom

    As always, fuck Jane Sanders. I’m even a little surprised myself, though. I always thought she at least fell on the incompetent side of the incompetent/corrupt fence. Incidentally, Burlington College still owes us about a thousand dollars for some advising my wife was doing.

    And on another related note, one of her friends found THIS from Goddard in 1996.

    An important bit:

    One of the greatest ironies of Jane’s candidacy for college president is in fact that she has personally benefited from all of the problems that she and Greene visited on the community. It must be remembered that Jane was the chair of the presidential search committee that chose Greene. It is her name that you will find on the contract with Greene, a contract that contained a corporate style “golden” parachute which required the school to pay him big bucks in order to buy out his contract after he resigned. Sanders was the president of the board during Greene’s entire tenure and was the power behind Greene during that period. Had she been democratically oriented the problem with Greene would have been solved the day he walked in the door. Without her support he could not have acted autocratically, unilaterally, and in a retaliatory manner. Jane, as board president, was directly involved in:

    Corrupting existing democratic processes at the college and acting as the primary apologist for the autocratic policies and practices of Richard Greene
    Orchestrating the formal approval of a budget (1996-7) that eliminated essential services, was politically retaliatory in nature, and excessively costly in administrative overhead
    Ensuring approval at the board level of what amounted to a faculty purge — the termination of 16 employees in 1996
    Suppressing criticism and stifling dissent

  34. 34.

    satby

    @James E Powell: Respect has to be earned. Sanders pissed away the respect people initially gave him, and continues to try to grift his followers and piss into the Democratic tent. We’ll leave him alone when he leaves us alone.

  35. 35.

    Bobby Thomson

    Yeah, but reading through the lines, the staffers quit because Weaver dropped Canova and is allegedly working on the Clinton campaign, not because he’s an idiot. At least that’s what the Twits are saying.

  36. 36.

    Shantanu Saha

    “The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you’ve got it made.”
    -J. Giraudoux (or G. Marx)

    Sanders has got it made.

  39. 39.

    Mr Rogers

    The comments on the Buzzfeed articles are a trip: either Bernie is a total sell out since he endorsed “Killery” or he was blackmailed by Chuck Schumer, which you could see in his body language at the convention. If all the Bernie voters went with Stein she will win in a blow out.

    We’re in mirror universe territory.

  40. 40.

    different-church-lady

    While I’m not particularly enjoying AL’s relentlessly ongoing Sanders trolling, the title did make me cackle out loud.

  41. 41.

    different-church-lady

    @Shalimar:

    …the people he was leading can either be a positive force or become go back to being disenchanted with politics.

    Fixed

  42. 42.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @different-church-lady: To be fair, AL’s Bernie posts have been sparse in recent weeks, with a focus on, you know, the actual players. Bernie just put himself back in the ring as a political force (farce?), so the pointing and mocking was earned.

  43. 43.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    Grifters gonna grift. Sanders’ operation was a grift machine top to bottom. I feel bad for those who got suckered.

  45. 45.

    Neldob

    Can’t say that either Obama or Clinton are much to the left of Nixon. It’s the extreme right that makes them relatively leftish.

  46. 46.

    PGFan

    I don’t think Bernie began his campaign with any kind of practical ideas about “building a movement” or sustaining one. Then his campaign started to do better than expected. Some of the most potent and persistent criticism of Bernie was that he was promising things without any clear plans of how to achieve them and that the idea of a “movement” somehow making things happen was fantasy. So pressure began to build for him to show how he could convert campaign enthusiasm into that “movement” that would go beyond the campaign. So they came up with this “Our Revolution”. I don’t think any of it is really compelling for Bernie personally — organizing, administering, etc. isn’t his thing. It IS Weaver’s thing, for better or worse. Whether it can get anything done in any significant way remains to be seen. Whether newly-minted activists will get on board with Weaver remains to be seen. Since the group is 501.C4 Bernie can say it’s not his baby anymore and go back to the Senate where he’s comfortable.

  47. 47.

    J R in WV

    @Neldob:

    Are you a young?

    Listen to the tapes, Nixon was a harsh bigot, calling Jews kikes, blacks the N word, right in the oval office while he knew he was being taped for posterity, and the prosecutors. Oops, maybe he forgot about the prosecutors.

    But not a good person, angry, full of spite and hate. Say what you want about Bill and Hillary, they are not haters, or evil corrupt people. They have worked to help others their whole life together.

    Nixon, not so much.

  48. 48.

    martian

    I’m only surprised Weaver wasn’t already running it. Bernie favours cronies over competence.

    Supporting progressive candidates for all levels of office is so critical for growing the Democratic bench and for extending our reach into hostile territories. Whatever my anger and disenchantment with Sanders, it is so disappointing to see this effort beginning in chaos.

    So, this is what became of Bernie’s remaining campaign funds and mailing list? He hoarded them up for this and didn’t give anything to the DNC?

  49. 49.

    MisterForkbeard

    On a lark, I just popped into the Kossacks for Sanders subreddit to see what they’re up to these days.

    Still convinced that Hillary should resign, has broken every promise ever, etc. Partially convinced she’ll be indicted for something, though they’re not really sure what, exactly. No mention of this news about Our Revolution from what I can see. As always, the primary driver from the BoBs seems to be hating Hillary rather than supporting Sanders.

  50. 50.

    daves09

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: * Our Revolution* will apparently be a Burlington, Vt comic book store revolution. We all knew Bernie wasn’t a big D democrat, now we find out he isn’t a small d either.
    *Our revolution is my revolution and you will all shut up and take your orders.* says Bernie.
    Will Bernie go all the way and bring Weaver out this evening? Hmmmm, could be an interesting evening of TV.

  51. 51.

    Vlad

    @msdc: Yeah, and I’m sure those grapes were sour anyway. No wonder Zephyr didn’t want them!

    (The entire point of Anne’s post is that Sanders isn’t willing to put in the work to support Democratic candidates this cycle. So if he actually were willing to support Teachout, and Teachout declined his offer of aid, then that’d totally undercut the claim that Anne was trying to make. It’d also undercut Anne’s narrative that Sanders supporters only care about Magical Purity Ponies if one of the anti-Sanders candidates rejected his help for ideological reasons. My assumption is that Anne wouldn’t trip over her own feet twice in a row like that, but if that’s the line you want to take, then I guess that’s your business.

    My read on the situation is that Teachout is on team Clinton, and has been for a while, so neither she nor the Sanders campaign have much interest in or affection for one another. YMMV, though.)

  52. 52.

    les

    @Neldob:

    Can’t say that either Obama or Clinton are much to the left of Nixon.

    Deaf and blind, are ya? Or is this just the usual burning stupidity?

  53. 53.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    On NPR’s ATC this evening:

    Among the departures was the group’s organizing director, Claire Sandberg, who also worked on the Sanders presidential campaign. Sandberg is critical of Our Revolution’s director, former Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver, for structuring the group as a 501(c)(4) (the section of the IRS code for a “social welfare” organization).

    Sandberg charges that Weaver did that so “he could take big checks from billionaires.”

    But the 501(c)(4) status also means the group can’t contribute directly to candidates many Sanders backers support, such as Tim Canova, who is running in Florida’s Democratic primary against former Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The incumbent has been a target of Sanders supporters, who charge she improperly backed Hillary Clinton for the nomination.

    [ RollCall says DWS is up by 10% in her race ]

    Allowing unlimited contributions from anonymous groups is also the polar opposite of the presidential campaign, in which Sanders rarely failed to point out his average contribution was $27.

    But Weaver says there is a difference between a presidential campaign and a group like Our Revolution. In a presidential race, he said, “You don’t want somebody elected, who is beholden to wealthy individuals or interests.”

    […]

    What’s unclear is what role the Vermont senator will have in Our Revolution. As a federal officeholder, Sanders faces limits on the kind of fundraising he can do for other candidates.

    (emphasis added)

    Flabbergasting.

    :-/

    J just left to attend the kickoff meeting. It’ll be interesting to hear what she says about it.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  54. 54.

    gwangung

    @Vlad:

    The entire point of Anne’s post is that Sanders isn’t willing to put in the work to support Democratic candidates this cycle.

    The prodigious work he’s putting in for Democratic candidates is proof of that, eh?

    As they say, the dude’s an incompetent. And he’s lazy. Maybe one or two sneezes to support other candidates and that’s it.

  55. 55.

    AxelFoley

    @Neldob:

    Can’t say that either Obama or Clinton are much to the left of Nixon. It’s the extreme right that makes them relatively leftish.

    Stupid comments like this is why no one takes the far left seriously.

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