Remember when the Beto boom first got underway a while back, and, like clockwork, Sanders supporters swarmed out of the woodwork to hammer the former Texas congressman as a neo-con stooge? Remember when mostly the same cast of characters launched the “Kamala is a cop” attacks?
Those criticisms had a coordinated feel to them. They originated from Sanders supporters, and sure enough, when Sanders announced he was running, some of those same folks took on significant roles in his campaign. Maybe that telegraphs another scorched-earth strategy in the Democratic primary, though Sanders vows he’ll play nice.
I’ve been thinking about what this means for primary beyond Sanders. I’ll re-state my bias up front: Sanders is a special case, a cuckoo chick hatched in the Democratic Party nest who squawks the loudest and attempts to eject the other eggs when the parent birds turn their backs.
But I worry that the same brand of factionalism has infected politics more broadly. I am concerned that the disinformation and coordinated attacks that were amplified to smear Clinton in 2016 and O’Rourke and Harris more recently are now a permanent feature of our politics.
Buttigieg has been in the barrel lately. Some of that comes from the Sanders people, but not all. Some of it seems to be an organic reaction to the media attention Buttigieg has received, rooted in genuine disagreement with his approach. His record, writing, campaign speeches, etc., should be scrutinized and criticized where warranted. But IMO, a lot of the criticism, especially on Twitter, is drive-by bullshit, cherry-picked to make Buttigieg look bad while material from the same sources is ignored because it doesn’t support the reader/listener’s agenda.
Joe Biden is likewise coming in for a ton of criticism lately. He was the subject of recent articles about his Senate record (treatment of Anita Hill, lead role in the crime bill, bankruptcy legislation, etc.) plus an account from Lucy Flores, who says she was on the receiving end of creepy behavior. Biden’s spokesman blames right-wing trolls for smearing Biden, and the usual suspects are hypocritically making hay of the controversy despite being supporters of the grotesque groper in the White House.
It’s not all wingnuts, though. Folks have been pointing out that Flores is a Sanders operative. Is it a hit job? I don’t know. I do know Biden’s overly familiar behavior around women has seemed vaguely icky to me for years. It’s not sexual harassment. He doesn’t mean any harm. But I get the handsy-older-relative-you-avoid vibe, which is a bad look in 2019.
So, here’s what I’m asking myself: Do I object to the Buttigieg criticism because I genuinely don’t find it credible or productive? Or am I responding that way due to my own bias as someone who likes Buttigieg and hopes to see more of him in national politics, if not in 2020 (he’s not my preferred candidate), in the future? Ditto Biden, whose time has passed, IMO, and whom I do not want to see bigfoot the 2020 race mostly on name recognition and undermine better candidates?
I think my rationales are sound, of course. Who doesn’t? But I also know that, like a newspaper editorial department, individuals select the things they focus on and choose what to ignore or downplay. There will always be subjectivity involved in those decisions, but good editors try to keep their eye on the larger picture and be fair. As a citizen, I want to be fair too. I’m struggling with how to be fair in assessing Democratic candidates and reactions to them. I think a lot of us will struggle with this in the next year and a half.
Another thing I’m trying to work out is if these really are different times — more tribal, acrimonious, subject to meme-generation and social media manipulation, etc. — or is it just the same old bullshit on different platforms? Lord knows the 2008 primary was one of the ugliest I can recall, but it’s possible 2016 changed the fundamentals in ways we haven’t fully reckoned with yet since candidate “dirt” (organic and trollery) can be disseminated instantly — without context — and cross the chasm to the mainstream press.
So, to return to the title question, can we get through the 2020 primary without losing our minds? I sure hope so, but the early signs are not encouraging. Maybe we can brainstorm and come up with some ideas.
The other day, WaterGirl suggested having an occasional thread where people can make a positive case for their preferred candidates without running their opponents down. I think that’s a good idea but maybe impossible to enforce. Arguing about politics is a big part of what we do here — and part of what makes this place entertaining, enlightening — and sometimes infuriating.
One thing I’m going to try to do going forward is examine my biases, be open about them and provide a broader context around things that inform my opinions. If I disagree with Candidate A’s stance on Issue B, I’ll not only say that, I’ll include quotes from Candidate A and a link to my source rather than just my interpretation.
In the future, I will also try not to be immediately suspicious of the motives of folks who criticize candidates I like. Since I am naturally paranoid and still suffering from 2016 PTSD, I will probably fail at that. A lot. But I think it’s worth a shot.
What do you think?
Davebo
Shirley you are serious
debbie
I honestly don’t think I can. I feel like I shouldn’t pay attention this soon; then I feel like a sell-out if I don’t. SCREEEEEEEEEAM.
PsiFighter37
I love politics, but the insanity of the primaries is far worse than it used to be. Social media certainly has something to do with it, but I think it’s because every single little last nit is picked over, that it can make perfectly good candidates seem unqualified.
I should also note that my perception is that the target of Berniebro / social media nitpicking is especially noticeable for both Harris and Booker…hmmm, I wonder what they have in common.
PsiFighter37
Also, people should stop taking Mayor Pete seriously as a candidate. Being in charge of what really amounts to a backwater city in my book doesn’t prepare you to be POTUS.
tom
No.
SATSQ.
bobbo
Just ask yourself why you “like” him (or any candidate) in the first place. Is it just his resume? Personality? Do his policy goals align with yours?
debbie
To me, it’s too coordinated. Little whispers in the ears of supporters of other candidates to get them all exercised over him. Like something out of Brueghel.
Cheryl Rofer
Yes, I think we can get through this without losing our minds. Overall, the best thing that could happen is for Wilmer and his acolytes to disappear from the face of the earth, but that’s not gonna happen.
I’m not bothered by the “attacks” in the ways some other people are. The other day, I tweeted “Bye bye Buttigieg” in response to his dig at Hillary Clinton. I got more heated response to that than pretty much anything I’ve tweeted for a long time. That was my instant response. I’m sick of people dissing Clinton and the misogyny that it engenders/ enables. Might I change my mind? Sure. Voting is a year away.
Part of that, I think, is that I grew up in the New York area, and my sense, from living in various parts of the country, is that New Yorkers are less offended by the expression of strong opinions than people from other parts of the country.
I’m glad to see so many voices. They are giving us a great many good ideas that can be crafted into a platform that will appeal to most of the voters, and we will win.
At the same time, there is just some crap that I am sick of and will not hesitate to call it out.
A Ghost To Most
The question presumes that has not already occurred.
Cheryl Rofer
I do think that we can expect a variety of types of messing with our heads via bots and such that we need to resist. I am blocking anyone who remotely acts like a bot on Twitter – just blocked one that tried to sidetrack what I said. I think it was a real human, mansplaining, but I don’t care.
I want to write more about how to deal with that kind of interference. A New York thick skin and a willingness to block is one way. But there are others.
James E Powell
I’m thinking that as long as there are many candidates it will be wild times on the internet arguing their relative merits in an attempt to help the ones we like to emerge or survive. But out in the real world, I’m thinking we all ought to be registering voters and keeping track to be ready for GOTV. Nothing else matters.
My adopted home state of California is now part of Super Tuesday, March 3, 2020, and I fully expect the field to be reduced to two shortly after that date. I may well travel to Iowa to volunteer to be part of a campaign if any will have me. Until then, all our talk in the internet is just that.
Bobby Thomson
I think Old Handsy Joe is a big phoney who makes up tear jerking anecdotes and plays with people’s emotions. I think he’s a walking own goal machine who would make Romney look suave by comparison. I think he has antediluvian attitudes about women reflected in how he used Abrams as a trial balloon prop without even clearing it with her beforehand.
And I think Buttigieg is an asshole.
And I think both of them can go to hell for thinking they would have done so much better than Clinton. One face planted badly twice with zero delegates and the other one lost elections for state treasurer and DNC chair.
I have pretty high standards now for white male candidates when presented with other options. These guys don’t come close. I hope they and Bernie all eat each other.
Bobby Thomson
@PsiFighter37: but he makes up for the thin resume with a complete absence of policy focus!
PsiFighter37
@Bobby Thomson: Meh. I’d rather take Beto’s absence of policy focus over his. Also, too, hard to have a national policy focus when you’re mayor of FUCKING SOUTH BEND.
The real problem, IMO, is that the primary feels like it’s gotten boiled down to identity politics and social media feeding frenzy. That’s a recipe for disaster. If folks cared about actual policy, Warren would be winning by a mile.
trollhattan
Sure seems like each Dem candidate has her or his very own Kraken, crafted, crated and ready to release as soon as they either announce or begin to grab all the cameras. Every one. Except Wilmer and that self-help lady and a couple others I can’t even name.
I temper my thoughts about Biden with the knowledge the Obamas really, truly love him like family. And family need not be perfect but we all have relatives we lock up the medicine cabinet for. He’s not That Guy.
Polls aside I think Warren is lapping everybody at the moment, with an aggressive schedule and really smart appearances and interviews. By contrast I can’t recall the last time I saw Harris, who started with quite a splash. Avoiding overexposure? One could argue that’s a smart tack, as well.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I think we’re all on edge because of Trump. I also think this thread shows Betty is right on to question the tone we’re quick to take.
different-church-lady
What 2016 revealed is that the electorate is dumber and more lizard-brained than anyone ever estimated, and some evil people figured out how to weaponize that. If it becomes a permanent part of our politics, it’s because the visceral has permanently eclipsed the rational in the behavior of the electorate.
That’s a pretty scary thought. And the left side of the spectrum is not immune to it.
different-church-lady
Also: “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”.
Betty Cracker
@bobbo: I like a candidate with an overarching vision, proposals to reach that goal, a sharp mind, a good temperament and a basic respect for humanity.
Obama had that. Even though I didn’t agree with him on everything, I trusted him as much as it’s possible for me to trust a politician. I see something similar in Buttigieg, though I don’t necessarily think he’s ready to be president yet.
guachi
I think there is just too much time between now and voting. And then the voting is all done quickly, at least as far the fact that Super Tuesday will likely be it for most candidates.
On the other hand, the extended pre-voting primary isn’t as bad as it seems with what will likely be a constant stream of polling and fundraising numbers.
Hopefully we weed out candidates before Iowa and then a lot more from Iowa through South Carolina.
waratah
This is my first experience with primary’s. Betos commentary on his Facebook and Twitter was scattered with magas and Russian bots and Bernie’s before he announced. The Bernie’s took over wanting his first days donation total which I think Beto was holding back deliberately. The magas and the bots stopped and left it to them. The Bernie’s completely took over no one else could post. I am sure the Republicans were happy to sit back and watch.
I have not checked Kamala and Elizabeth but sure they have experienced the same. I wish we only had to deal with the Republicans who I think are working behind the scenes to do as much damage to our primary they can.
FlipYrWhig
My half-assed theory is that Sanders sort of made himself into the Twitter candidate in 2016, and so Sandersites happily and eagerly bully people on Twitter, and for some reason the media loves Twitter, so Sandersites create havoc constantly and get it amplified by the media. I am grudgingly hate-using Twitter these days and think it brings out far too many people’s absolute worst tendencies — even when the subject at hand has nothing to do with politics. I have a feeling that in the absence of Twitter we wouldn’t perceive these ever-accelerating cycles of micro controversy. Thus we should encourage the absence of Twitter.
Betty Cracker
@PsiFighter37: Warren is my top choice now for that reason — she’s got the bold ideas. I don’t think she’ll be the nominee though. I think it will be Harris, and I’m more than okay with that.
Fair Economist
Social media replacing longer-form media has a lot to do with this. What seems to happen is that somebody tweets out “Candidate X did/said Y! Unacceptable!” and it gets amplified up in the echo chambers of social media. There’s no context and little fact-checking. And for any candidate, there’s *something* they did or said that will bother or upset you so there’s always material to drive this. If you’re honest about it, there is probably something *you* did or said that later bothers or upset you, right?
I think the instigators are often bad actors, as in the Russians spewing stuff about Hillary or these Sanders employees spewing stuff about Democratic candidates. But the new environment of reaction without thought does a lot to make these attacks successful.
Aleta
“Those criticisms had a coordinated feel to them.” I’ve hesitated to say this, but felt it. And kind of a tempo of someone running around lighting matches here and there. Could be I’m projecting a pattern but that’s what came to mind.
Doc Sardonic
Yes, we can get through the primaries without losing our minds, with a caveat. We know what Sanders and his supporters are, they showed their stripes in 2016. The biggest mistake of 2016 was the same one made by both sides, Democratic and Republican. Each side treated the opposition like parents of a spoiled toddler trying to stave off a tantrum. This time that cannot be done with Sanders. To quote my late father we as voting democrats and the other candidates along with their supporters need to “ grab that sonofabitch by the the nose and kick him ass ‘til his ears bleed” and not worry about whether he takes his ball and runs as an independent.
piratedan
we all have our own areas of “no go” zones for behavior or statements that serve as a personal touchstone of hot buttons. Mayor Pete triggered one of mine regarding statements on the HRC campaign. My own take is that she ran a campaign that far from perfect and I wish that she had made more time to make personal statements of her innocence instead of being “above it all”. Maybe that would have been useless, but in “taking the high road” it allowed a multitude of media smears to essentially go unchecked and unchallenged.
Make the media talk about the fact that no indictments against her were made, from her e-mail practices to Benghazi. Go ahead and preach it for all to see that no one found anything wrong, nothing illegal, certainly nothing unethical. Then let the media try and pick that apart. It seemed in a way that she was afraid of standing up for herself (untrue, but perhaps a perception). So when someone like Mayor Pete trotted out those Wilmeristic tropes about why she lost with nary any recognition on how she was being ratfucked by her primary opponent, the GOP (natch), the Russian Federation, the NYT and the role played by the FBI, I tend to get a bit shrill.
I don’t have an issue with our primary choices being vetted, I do have an issue with other folks pretending that HRC’s loss was all on her without any recognition of the forces arrayed against her. That doesn’t even mean that she might have even won but we can’t tell yet because we still haven’t gotten to the bottom of the discovery of how much Russia (and in coordination of the GOP) fucked over our electoral processes and for all we know, these bastards even altered or under counted votes.
I’m done talking the high road and when I see candidates that want my vote, I would also like for them to inhabit the political realities of the now and not the ones that elevate themselves at the expense of what we watched unfold two years ago.
James E Powell
@different-church-lady:
Agree completely. Also too, some other evil people – FBI agents directors and agents in particular – figured that they could completely disregard neutrality and all norms to exert influence to vent their visceral hatreds and no one – not the government not the press/media – would say that it was wrong or do anything to punish them for it.
We also found out that yet another group of evil people – the press/media – would no longer condemn people who violated standards of decorum and decency but would actually encourage, promote, and give massive amounts of free air time to those who did so. Even to the point of having reporters promoting a campaign that was encouraging its followers to attack reporters.
Amazing stuff and no, I will never get over it.
Don Beal
Just my opinion, but if you don’t soften that anti Sanders snarl you may find yourself with nothing to get behind if he becomes the candidate.
kindness
We get why the Russians would want to sow chaos. Why Berniestas want to though? Because they are doing exactly what they did in 2016. It reminds me more of Trump’s campaign. Dirty. My hope is Bernie goes down in flames fast and the race sorts itself out after Super Tuesday.
zhena gogolia
I am very spooked by the Russian interference in 2016, and now that they know they got away with it thanks to Barr and our media (and perhaps Mueller), it will be even more intense this time. (They didn’t seem to have as great an effect on the midterms — maybe they thought that was irrelevant.)
My gut feeling (I hate that expression, but that’s what this is) is that the Russians would like to see Bernie be the nominee. So they’re going to focus on exploiting our racial, gender, whatever divides to knock out all the other candidates. Then once he’s the nominee they’ll unload on him. And we’ll get more Trump. Trump is destroying our stature in the world, which is great for Putin.
?BillinGlendaleCA
It’s also important to see how each of the Democratic candidates responds to attacks, remember the swiftboating of John Kerry. You know, once we get to the general election the Republicans will attack 8 days a week.
Bobby Thomson
@Don Beal: nothing to get behind if he is.
And who the hell are you?
dexwood
No mind left to lose. Trump and company have depleted it. So, zombie-like, I plan to push on, support the Dem candidate, and work towards a full mental recovery. Fuck em.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
One thing I think we need to do sooner or later is get the nominating schedule under control. It’s nuts. We’re a year and a half away from the election, well more than a year from the convention, and it’s already fully underway. States are falling all over each other to be the first in line. I think this is a problem. My own feeling would be to let the first four have their special time, since there’s no way we could get Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada to sign on to anything if they don’t get to keep their slots, and then have the rest of the states go in order of population, from smallest to the biggest.
Xavier Onassis
At this point my strategy is to try not to pay too much attention. It’s too early.
trollhattan
@Bobby Thomson:
Saggy oldman butt: ewwwww!
trollhattan
@Xavier Onassis:
Yup.
Fair Economist
@piratedan:
But Mayor Pete wasn’t explaining why Hillary lost. He was talking about how he could improve on her performance. The social media firestorm was making people think the criticisms were a key message when they were offhand comments while tackling other points.
If you have no-go zones and don’t maintain an open and forgiving heart (because everybody makes mistakes), you make yourself extremely vulnerable to manipulation.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@dexwood: Come sit by me.
dexwood
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
It’d be my pleasure and an honor. I’ll bring the wine.
FlipYrWhig
@Don Beal:
He’s got to EARN my vote, see. If he doesn’t find a way to appeal to ME maybe he deserves to lose.
(That’s how it works, right?)
Feathers
@Don Beal: Sanders will not be the candidate. Far too many people truly dislike the man. He had big momentum at the beginning of the 2016 primaries because people liked his ideas and wanted to see the Democratic party move left. As soon as he started being taken seriously, he went full on rage monster and whatever broad based support in the party dried up. I’m in Cambridge, Mass. I know lots of people in my age range, 40s and up who voted for him. None of them supported him by the time the convention rolled around and were horrified that they had voted for him.
I just don’t see him picking up momentum this time. Last time around, people didn’t know him. Now they do. The only thing he has on his side is a willingness to put up with people’s worst behavior, as long as it is done in his name. And he’s white and male.
Tenar Arha
I’ll admit on the continuum of things that were making me hopeful that Biden wouldn’t jump into the campaign I didn’t think it would be his general inappropriate handsiness with women that would get us all in an uproar. I really thought it would be his actual positions and votes on crime, abortion, bankruptcy law, etc, plus his actions as Judiciary Chairman during & after Anita Hill testifying about Clarence Thomas. Well, all of that, & the apparent fact that he’s never been very good at running a Presidential campaign of his own…like with the reports about fundraising or putting out the fires he’s occasionally set himself on the trail etc.
ETA Then again, I’m not sure why I’m surprised that it’s this that’s hurting him the most, bc it’s so emblematic of his greatest long term failure as Judiciary Chairman.
Bobby Thomson
@FlipYrWhig: full points.
Miss Bianca
@PsiFighter37: Ordinarily, I’d agree with you. However, my withers are strangely wrung over this one – because Mayor Pete, or Beto, or anyone – any goddamn one-term city councilman – can justifiably make the argument that they’re better qualified than the guy currently occupying the White House. And they’d be right.
Yet another standard we can blame Trump for lowering.
Mary G
I just left aa comment on the WaPo Plum Line blog entry written by Paul Waldman today.
FlipYrWhig
@Feathers:
AFAICT he had big momentum for two reasons: among young educated people, who liked his ideas; and among people who really hated Hillary Clinton, who really hated Hillary Clinton.
plato
@James E Powell:
This, a gazillion times.
Bobby Thomson
@Tenar Arha: that too, but we take what presents itself.
Cheryl Rofer
It’s always worth pointing out, as an argument escalates, that one will support the Democratic nominee, no matter who that is.
Even Bernie.
Don’t forget that some of these folks will drop by the wayside for one reason or other. And that will (mostly) be a good thing. We don’t need the mass spectacle that the Republican debates presented the last time around.
And I agree with the comment that we allow this to go on for too long. I kind of doubt that any law to cut it down wouldn’t be found unconstitutional, though.
Kathleen
@Fair Economist:Hillary is not running. Can’t he position himself and his ideas without a gratuitous swipe at her? What is the point, other than to embellish his Disaffected Rust Belt Whisperer cred?
Bobby Thomson
@Mary G: there was a guy in law school who was always walking up behind women and rubbing their shoulders. Creeped me the fuck out and I regret not having said anything.
Tenar Arha
@Cheryl Rofer: Yes. This too. I know what I think about some of the candidates, and who I’m inclined to be more or less enthusiastic to vote for in the primaries. And I’m also team all in on whoever ends up as the nominee.
zhena gogolia
@Cheryl Rofer:
Not unless he shares his tax returns.
zhena gogolia
@Kathleen:
Do you know about some of the other things he’s been saying?
guachi
@FlipYrWhig:
Which is probably why you see Sanderites trying to gin up the same level of hatred for all the non-Wilmer candidates.
schrodingers_cat
@Kathleen: Hear hear.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@Don Beal: HA! That’s the best April Fool’s prank I’ve seen today (80 year old wilmer winning the nomination)
Mary G
@Cheryl Rofer: I am OK with substantive disagreements over candidates in the primary right up to the point that one of them wins enough votes for the nomination. At that minute Democrats have to sing Kumbaya and start working for her or him in the general. Anybody who does anything else besides get into the fight on that person’s side is to be shunned. I plan to block them on Twitter and make everyone around anywhere else STFU. It wasn’t the Bernie/Hillary fight that did so much damage, it was his inability to acknowledge his loss and his supporters’ shitting all over the convention and anywhere else afterward.
Bobby Thomson
@zhena gogolia: that’s just a variation on the “he never murdered me” argument.
Cheryl Rofer
@zhena gogolia: There are a couple of ways of going about this. You can make a list of requirements, like sharing tax returns. If the Democratic Party will (can?) enforce those requirements, let’s go for it.
But it also looks to me like not sharing tax returns, among Bernie’s other negatives, is likely to make him one of those folks who don’t reach the debates, let alone the nomination. So it costs me nothing to say I’ll support him, and it calms a lot of water. Would that Bernie’s supporters could make a similar gesture.
And if it happens that he opposes Trump in the general, and Trump hasn’t released his tax returns, well, who will you support?
chopper
it is funny that mayor pete is dealing with ratfucking out of the sanders camp. really hoping that wilmer doesn’t try to burn it all down again.
Betty Cracker
@Don Beal: I’ve come to dislike Sanders intensely. But if it’s Sanders vs. Trump, I’ll vote for Sanders. That’s all I’ve got, and that’s all he deserves.
Miss Bianca
@Cheryl Rofer:
I really, really hope I am not living in a world where the choice comes down to Bernie or Trump.
Then again, I *thought* I was living in a world where the very idea of Donald Trump being President was unthinkable.
Cheryl Rofer
@Miss Bianca: Not my preferred outcome either, but I find it helps to think about worst cases before they occur.
Ruckus
@Feathers:
And opposite that is he’s fucking old and lacks coherent policy past the tag line and absolutely no idea how to accomplish even getting the tag lines passed, and no record to speak of for his over 2 decades in national office. Also tax returns. On the plus side he’s a perfect example of why just being an office holder doesn’t matter for a presidential candidate…. As long as you don’t actually give a shit if he can do the job.
different-church-lady
@Fair Economist:
And even if there isn’t, you can just make something up.
Richard Guhl
Since the policy divisions between our candidates are less than their most fervent partisans would have us believe, I look more at my gut feeling about character.
The one who I’m most inclined to say, ‘No,’ to by that criteria is Bernie. To check my hunch I Googled “How well liked is Bernie Sanders by his colleagues?” and came up with an article from Boston Magazine in 2015, Bernie is Cold as Ice.
The gist was that he has little tolerance for other’s opinions and tends to stridency.
I wonder how well that’ll work should he become President.
Now, having said what is probably pretty popular here, I’m going to suggest someone who is not popular here at all.
My criterion is courage.
And the candidate who I think has shown that is Kirsten Gillibrand.
Despite knowing that women never, ever, ever come out ahead by taking on a powerful man, and especially a popular one, she took the lead in confronting Al Franken.
And, no surprise here, it cost her.
And if anyone suggests that she did so as some sort of gimmick to get ahead, I have to ask what planet you live on, because here on Earth women get eaten alive.
chopper
pete isn’t my first candidate, hell, he isn’t even my fourth. but after 2016 my ears are pretty well pricked up. i’m much more attuned to hit-job bullshit than i was before and i’m sure that’s true for a lot of other people.
Jeffro
@Miss Bianca: true, but…We shouldn’t let Republicans set standards for Democrats
Just ‘cause they’re happy with the world’s biggest turd in their punch bowl doesn’t mean we should be okay with one in ours
SenyorDave
I don’t want Biden in 2020 because of Anita Hill, he definitely has a “touching” problem, and he has nothing to offer, especially in terms of policy. To me he is a non-starter, if what Lucy Flores described happened it is disqualifying, but it does matter whether it did happen. I do wonder where the line is (IMO jn politics I think anything more than a handshake should never be initiated by the politician, male or female). I am a very non-touchy feely person – I’d be very happy if the only people I ever made any type of close physical contact with were family and very close friends. I can think of at least three times in my professional career were women (all different) touched me in ways that made me feel uncomfortable. All three of these women were people I worked closely with, respected, and I am 100% sure that it was completely non-sexual in each case. But these women were all “touchers” – they commonly used light physical contact with people they worked closely with. I always thought Biden was closer to this type of touching, but if the Flores incident happened that is a game-changer. BTW, the Biden-biker chick was pretty much a staged photo and she was not sitting in his lap.
schrodingers_cat
@Feathers: He always votes against any measure that would give immigrants the slightest relief, just like his R buddy from Iowa. He has also voted against all the Russian sanctions. He is Russian stooge. Sanders is the lefty version of the man in the WH. Both have crazy hair and a similar accent. They like to yell.
different-church-lady
@piratedan:
Anyone who has been the object of playground bullies knows you cannot talk your way out of it. The media needed to be the adults, and they refused.
zhena gogolia
@Richard Guhl:
Interesting comment.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Here’s something positive:
Beto Mania Sweep Texas
Austin (photo)
Houston (photo)
El Paso (photo)
Muslims for Beto (photo)
Girls for Beto (photo)
Over 1,000 house parties on Saturday.
And he capped it off by raising a over a $1,000,000 on Sunday (with the average donation of $33). No foolin’
Ruckus
@Cheryl Rofer:
Thinking about worst cases and how to prevent them rather than support them is always a good idea. Given what life is, it’s the best way to continue to keep doing it. Almost all the things that conservatives hate, that we’d like to take for granted are answers to “How bad can it be?” And as the answer is always worse than you probably can imagine, working to at least minimize the worst cases in life and humanity is vital.
Jay
In the Nazi thread down page, I posted a bit from an interview with Chris Wylie, but the blog hates the link,
“What many don’t know is that Cambridge Analytica has its origins in another company, SCL Group. It is a British military contractor, and when I first started working there CA did not exist as a structure at all. Our task when I joined was to map out and predict the spread of radical Islamic narratives online and to analyze how recruiters are radicalizing young men and coercing them to do terrible things. We would then build systems and tools to act as early warning signals, so that a military or civil agency could interfere with recruiting and radicalization operations in different parts of the world.
It all changed as soon as Steve Bannon sat at the helm of the company. All the technologies that were designed to interfere with the effectiveness and cohesiveness of terrorist organizations got fully inverted. With a few tweaks, they were now used against voters in the American elections – we started looking at ordinary Americans the same way the military was looking at radicals, and the dirty game of disinformation began to unravel.
Initially our algorithms easily identified parts of the American population that were more narcissistic, neurotic and conspiratorial. They were then targeted with messaging that encouraged more conspiratorial and neurotic thinking and lured them into forums, chat rooms and Facebook groups with people who shared the same thinking – or oftentimes bots that were parroting the same narratives.
Once these groups grew to include a couple of thousand members, local events would be set up. At that point, even if only 5 percent of users actually showed up to those events, that would be enough to form a tangible community where conspiratorial thinking was completely normalized. What started as a digital fantasy had become their reality. The exact same techniques that the military would use to undermine a narcotics or terrorist operation were being used reversely, to essentially create an American insurgency that then became what we now know as the alt-right.“
The Mound of Sound Blog has more snips and the link to the full article.
Online digital manipulation and radicalization software is now available, in many makes and models, for anyone willing to pay for it.
Spanky
@chopper:
I think there’s a fairly good (certainly non-zero) chance that that is his real goal. He’s had plenty of chances to be compromised by the Soviets cum Russians.
Emma
@Don Beal: I’ll vote for a komodo dragon to get Trump out. But I’ll give you a prediction for nothing: a Sanders presidency will be a massive clusterf_ck because his only real interest seems to be the old reductionist “economic equality” crud. He has learnt nothing from observation and experience, and it might end up with as violent a swing back as Trump was.
B.B.A.
Still early days. Better to get all this out of our system now, so when we get to Iowa it’ll all be old news.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
On one of the MSNBC shows, the panel was discussing Biden and the discussion was almost exclusively around Flores, would it derail Biden or not? One panelist mentioned Anita Hill, and the right-leaning (I think) AB Stoddard was arguing as Biden was a sure-thing who could only be undone by the crazy left and their purity tests. While I hate and worry about purity tests, I was reminded once again that the Iraq War doesn’t exist for pundits. It was a big part of why HRC lost the primary in ’08 and a lot of purity-left votes in ’16, and trump lied about it for a reason. Susan Sarandon still talks about HRC’s hawkishness as a justification for her narcissistic stupidity. I like Biden, but he used to brag about writing the AUMF for Iraq, and I suspect he’s on one of those anonymous “senior Obama officials’ who bitch about Obama not going bigger into Syria. I’m team Broken Glass, but the idea that trump couldn’t damage Biden is a fantasy from people who like about him the exact things that a lot of don’t.
UncleEbeneezer
@trollhattan: Kamala’s been doing the work.
Kathleen
@zhena gogolia: Yes. But It really bothers me when he (or any other candidate) feels compelled to drag criticism of Hillary’s campaign. Of course she made mistakes. Of course she has flaws. So does every other candidate and campaign. I also believe focusing on “what she did wrong” displays either extreme naivete, denial, or a woeful misunderstanding of what happened on that horrible night which I’ve maintained was a coup. So I admit while I reflexively react when she is criticized because I admire her, I also view criticism as missing a much more important point. The candidate I support has to recognize the existential threat level in this country and I’m not sure he does.
ETA: All that being said, I also believe Wilmer’s cult is engaged in rodent procreation with Mayor Pete, Beto & Biden.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@schrodingers_cat: And he voted for Drump’s wall
Kdaug
What I think is I’m going to ride this thing out, let y’all decide, and vote D in Nov2020. Too much shit going on, and I just don’t want to play.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Emma: the one area where I sorta kinda agree with Wilmer– foreign policy and specifically I/P– would be lethal for him in a general election. Underneath all of trump’s incompetence and incoherence, a lot of people would prefer his cartoonish toughness to Bernie’s hand-waving
UncleEbeneezer
@Betty Cracker: Btw Betty, if you have any interest, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the DCCC blacklisting thing. My knowledge of what the DCCC really does, is pretty limited. Justice Dems are screaming bloody murder, but I tend to instinctively ignore them because that is their default on anything involving the Democratic Party.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/31/politics/dccc-primary-challenger-rule/index.html
different-church-lady
@Kathleen: You know who else has flaws? THE FUCKIN’ ELECTORATE.
The candidates aren’t allowed to say it. I will.
schrodingers_cat
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: His voting record has been consistently anti-immigrant. So this is not a surprise.
Kathleen
@different-church-lady: Yes! When I hear pundits yammer about “we need better candidates” I scream, “No! We need a better class of voters” at the TV (between hurling epithets at Chuck Todd).
matt
The DCCC thing is horrible. The ‘Harris is a cop’ thing is stupid garbage and the people who did it ought to be discredited. The creeper stuff about Biden is going to stick because we’re in the middle of settling those scores. Buttigieg is fine as a dark horse candidate. It’s a crowded field and things are really up in the air which means things are going to be contested more sharply than usual. I think that’s a good thing.
B.B.A.
Hoping one of the trailing candidates will call Bernie a Russian agent to his face at a debate. It’ll be entertaining if nothing else.
MomSense
@James E Powell:
I’ve really wanted to go to NH to volunteer for Kamala but my mom’s recent bout of bronchitis has made me realize that she is more vulnerable than I want to acknowledge. If I can find a way to connect and make phone calls from out of state, I’ll do that. I signed up to volunteer so hopefully I’ll hear from an organizer soon.
HeleninEire
@Xavier Onassis: This
Bobby Thomson
@UncleEbeneezer: Justice Dems being agin it makes me question my instincts, but I’ve always been a fan of healthy primaries followed by falling in line. We’ve had incumbents who were loony and/or outright corrupt, as well as plenty out of step with their constituents, and the notion that someone could be blacklisted for trying to replace them doesn’t sit well with me. I suppose they don’t want to be accused of selectively playing favorites when they drop the hammer on someone trying to primary red state incumbents so they have a bright line policy. It still smells.
rikyrah
I will repeat…
We are the city that has paid out OVER HALF A BILLION DOLLARS FOR SETTLEMENT OF POLICE MISCONDUCT LAWSUITS IN THE PAST 5 YEARS ???
What part of that is confusing for anyone who thinks????
She is so cancelled
ABC News (@ABC) Tweeted:
Sen. Amy Klobuchar says she agrees with Mayor Rahm Emanuel on the Jussie Smollett case: “I don’t understand why the prosecutors could not explain why they did what they did. I don’t think anything prevents them … it makes no sense to me.” https://t.co/w34jzvskom #ThisWeek https://t.co/eWD8b2POCV https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1112490385794887680?s=17
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@schrodingers_cat: don’t forget how he loved to go on the racist Lou Dobbs show and brag about his votes against immigration and then blame immigrants for stagnant wages.
what makes it more galling is his father immigrated from Poland to escape violence and poverty. Yet Wilmer doesn’t think that same opportunity should be extended to people with brown skin.
Fair Economist
@Kathleen:
Buttigieg is mostly talking lefty policy. He’s not positioning himself as an anti-Hillary. This idea that he is coming from the echo chamber commenting over and over on some mild criticisms of Hillary’s 2016 strategy rather than the tens of thousands of words about other things.
schrodingers_cat
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: I somehow missed that. Again unsurprising. I have always been anti-BS. Even when he had many FP cheerleaders in the last go around.
schrodingers_cat
If Pete B becomes President he will sell immigrants down the river and sign IIRIRA 2.0 to keep his Midwestern buddies happy. He likes to be liked. I want our standard bearer to be a fighter. We are in the fight for our lives, our values and our democracy.
Marcopolo
Ah, primaries. In 2004 I was a full on Deaniac. Went to Iowa to knock doors the week before the caucuses. Saw the coordinated Kerry/Gephardt nuking of him (remember the ad where Dean’s head morphed into Osama Bin Laden?), saw the way the media twisted the “scream” moment (I was in the effing ballroom 25 feet from Dean and could barely hear him over the din), and then pretty much went awol for the rest of the election cycle cause I was so pissed at Kerry. But I did learn a lesson: not to fall too friggen head over heels with any primary candidate to the point it taints my general election energy.
In 2008 I still had a favorite going in: Edwards! I really liked his two America’s critique. Well, we know how that turned out :). I was embarrassed to have supported him but another lesson learned. Anyhow, I jumped on Obama’s bandwagon, worked 50-60 hours/week on his campaign from June-election, had a blast, and that is actually the path I am hoping to follow this time around. In 2016 I stayed mostly neutral till voting for Clinton in the primary & I did do some work for her campaign but there wasn’t much going on in Missouri in regards to that.
I have a favorite now. I have made donations and I will give them some time. After them I have 3 or so other folks I like. I have a couple I truly loathe. But I am not going to totally invest myself until there is a nominee. Hell I don’t have a clue as to who will be viably on the ballot when the MO primary happens in late March 2020.
In the meantime, the stuff I am watching & noting is whether our candidates piss inside or outside of the D party tent when they make comments & critiques. Whether they adequately address racial, gender, wealth inequality, and other social justice issues with actually plausible realistic public policy & programmatic answers. I honestly don’t know if that makes for a winning candidate/platform or not. As different-church-lady said above, one thing 2016 made clear is we should not underestimate the American electorate’s stupidity, their ability to be conned by by a fast talking narcissist compounded by their inability to distinguish the truth from lies and reality from fiction. It truly is depressing.
My own personal contribution to the process is I will do my best to focus on positive aspects of candidates I like and if I am going to criticize anyone (even a candidate I like) I am going to stick to their concrete/observable qualities instead of how I feel about them.
Last but not least, today would be a great day for Bernie to release his taxes (Donald too for that matter). And kudos to Jay Inslee for doing that this past week–I think he’s the first candidate to do so.
Kay
@Kdaug:
That’s so nice! Letting go. Right now I’m leaning “Klobachur”. The boring, little bit mean candidate.
No one will even bother fighting with me. She’s going to do immigration in her first 100 days, so that’s ambitious. Imagine how mad Trump will be! I’m basing my vote on joyless, grim vengeance :)
Emma
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: My biggest problem with Sanders is that everything pivots on some sort of economic equality that will fix everything. There’s a lot of hand-waving when someone asks about anything else. I lived through one of those experiments. After everything was expropriated and the evil rich fled, everyone cheered. Until they realized that a lot of the expropriated stuff was finding its way to the in-clique. Lots of injuries, real or perceived, lots of hatred and envy, lots of “payback”. It happens every time because human beings are not naturally moral creatures. There is very influential stuff besides economics that plays into a society and those things are as important as economics.
Fair Economist
@schrodingers_cat:
Sounds pretty supportive of immigrants to me.
tobie
I decided about 10 days ago that I should try to avoid outrage regarding any candidate since they might turn out to be the party nominee, and I will have to canvass for them in the fall of 2020. I am worried that Sanders seems to attract folks who spend their time knocking down anyone who is on the up and may take votes away from St. Bernard. It does divide us to the extent that we’re partisans (in the best sense of the term!) and, after suffering through Trump & Yertle want a government that reflects our thinking, our values, our priorities.
Spanky
@Marcopolo: Yep, Edwards and his wonderful wife Elizabeth. Once burned, twice shy. I’ll be spreading my money between a few primary candidates, but I’m not going all-in on anybody. So far all-out on any and all non-Dems – including Independents from Vermont.
Spanky
@Kay:
You must not be Irish, Kay. We find great joy in vengeance.
I’m hoping to have moments of great joy in 2020.
low-tech cyclist
@Marcopolo: Actually, Elizabeth Warren released 10 years of her tax returns last August But I’m glad that Inslee has done it, and it looks like Klobuchar just released 12 years of her taxes.
But Bernie Sanders continues to dodge questions about releasing his tax returns, even as he pressures Trump to do the same. Big surprise, I know.
low-tech cyclist
@Marcopolo: Actually, Elizabeth Warren released 10 years of her tax returns last August But I’m glad that Inslee has done it, and it looks like Klobuchar just released 12 years of her taxes.
tobie
@rikyrah: I’m not up on this case even though it’s been everywhere in the news so correct me if I’m wrong but from the clip I thought she was saying that the prosecution shouldn’t be allowed to hide behind a notion of prosecutorial discretion and that they owed the public an explanation about why they first announced they were pressing charges in a very public fashion and then withdrew them. I thought she was being critical of the prosecution for playing the public the way it did and then hiding behind claims of secrecy. As I said, I’m not up on what happened with Smollett so I may well be missing something.
Redshift
@different-church-lady:
Yup. Part of the reason I’m so so annoyed at people writing off candidates because of one objectionable statement or act is that I remember the “New Democrat” era, when way too many Dems thought they could avoid Republican attacks by phrasing things just right.
I don’t want to drive candidates to that kind of caution. We don’t have to ignore things that bother us, but we ask for an explanation, not just write them off and tune out anything more they have to say.
low-tech cyclist
OK, why is a rather anodyne comment documenting which candidates have and haven’t released tax returns caught in moderation?
(Link goes to the Florence + the Machine song by that name.)
Richard Guhl
@zhena gogolia: Interesting good or I
Mutter Museum interesting?
zhena gogolia
@Richard Guhl:
Good! I’m afraid Gillibrand has just been discarded . . . .
Jay
@rikyrah:
Did Rahm call for the Prosecutors to relelease their findings and reasons for dropping the charges?
Or is ABC tweeting a gotcha game?
Because I also don’t understand why it’s not out in the open.
Major Major Major Major
So far the worst piece of campaigning belongs to Warren: the DNA test.
I still think she’d make the best president, which is what really matters to me.
Marcopolo
@UncleEbeneezer: So, here’s the thing. The DCCC is made up of elected D congress critters. Of course they are going to protect their own (incumbent Ds)! But they are also dinosaurs. At least when it comes to the fundraising part. 2018 taught us that small dollar donations to a candidate through ActBlue fueled by a couple of smart fundraising pitches using social media pretty much supports running a viable campaign. Look at Sharice Davids or Amy McGrath. Or AOC or Ayanna Pressley (who both took on and beat out of touch older entrenched (but obviously not too entrenched) D incumbents.
Anyway, while I do agree with AOC & the folks criticizing Cheri Bustos, I just don’t think the DCCC really wields the power to squash great young/new candidates challenging D incumbents. I also believe that the DCCC deciding to implement this policy mostly just highlights how weak their influence really is. If you are really in control you don’t publicly threaten anyone–instead you do it behind the scenes.
schrodingers_cat
@Fair Economist: Perhaps you are right and I am being paranoid. Pete B is certainly ranks higher than BS for me. We will see. I am waiting for the debates.
Marcopolo
@Spanky: Yeah, honestly there was probably a tell in there somewhere in regards to Edwards–maybe the whole “hair” thing–but I didn’t catch it. As for Elizabeth, may she RIP, I bet she would have been a much better public servant than John.
Bobby Thomson
@Major Major Major Major: it’s of a piece with Biden publicly floating a test balloon he hadn’t cleared with Abrams as though she was just an accessory with no agency. Had she done some prep work it never would have happened.
Major Major Major Major
@Bobby Thomson: only if Joe was somehow doing it to lay to rest years of fake scandal.
tobie
@Marcopolo: Sharice Davids and Amy McGrath were not running against an incumbent Democrat so the proposed rule would have had no bearing on them in 2018. I know the Justice Dems have talked about putting up someone to primary Hakeem Jeffries and I hope whomever they find has their ass handed to them in the fall. All things being equal, I wouldn’t care about this rule. Given that we’ll need all hands on deck to fight the GOP in 2020, I’d really prefer not to have a series of costly primaries.
Bobby Thomson
@low-tech cyclist: I think KG has as well.
Bobby Thomson
@Fair Economist: he is positioning himself as anti-Hillary because he’s done jack shit to dispel the growing perception that he is. Just as Obama knew what he was doing with the McClurkin stuff and shifted gears after gay donors turned off the spigot.
Redshift
@kindness:
Well, one possibility that’s kind of obnoxious but not necessarily sinister is that in a crowded field where their guy starts out with near the largest bloc of support, trying to keep other candidates’ supporters fragmented is one potential path to victory in the primaries. Not necessarily one that puts you in the strongest position in the general election, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there are people who think that’s a problem to deal with later.
Gelfling 545
@Don Beal: He’s not going to be the candidate. He’s got not just one but several very talented people to compete with this time; people who have broader and more interesting policy proposals and are not crabby, scolding old men. Just my opinion.
Marcopolo
@tobie: Sharice & Amy are examples of candidates who did not get any live from the DCCC until their campaigns caught fire on their own. Amy (who did not win anyhow) because winning in her district seemed such a stretch & Sharice since she was running in such a crowded primary. But AOC & Pressley totally fit the bill. And all 4 make the argument that the DCCC isn’t much of of a gatekeeper anymore.
Off the top of my head I would throw out Lipinski in IL as a much too conservative D incumbent that needs replacing who, for some reason I don’t understand, the D establishment continues to support. In 2020 I hope the folks in his district who want someone better learn their lesson & consolidate behind on challenger instead of what happened last time around.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I despise him, but it’s exactly that crabby scolding– the weaponized sanctimony– that seems to be the basis of the whole Cult of Wilmer. And he has convinced a lot of people that Obama and Clinton and their supporters are the real enemy.
rikyrah
@UncleEbeneezer:
I say good for the DCCC. The Justice Democrats are nothing but ratphuckers??
Hildebrand
I really don’t understand why it isn’t cricket to criticize Sec. Clinton’s campaign in 2016. I get the laundry list of reasons why she had a stupid amount of headwinds to fight against (misogyny, Clinton-hate, knavish focus on emails, Russia meddling), but I think the campaign still misread the moment – just as she really didn’t know what to do when Obama caught fire in 2008. I think it helpful to remember that 2016 wasn’t the first election Clinton should have won, which means maybe she isn’t a terrific campaigner – she likely would have governed well, but those two things aren’t the same. We had better learn our lessons, recognize the tilted playing field, and work our asses off to get the outcome we want – just as we did in 2018.
Full discolsure: my first choice is Sen. Harris, second Sen. Warren, and then Mayor Pete. Stacey Abrams leapfrogs Sen. Warren if she gets in.
rikyrah
Lily Adams (@adamslily) Tweeted:
NEWS: @KamalaHarris Raises $12 Million in Q1 from 218,000 Individual Contributions
98% of contributions < $100
99% of donors can contribute again https://twitter.com/adamslily/status/1112876800097640448?s=17
Another Scott
@Jay: Michael Mann made the point in a recent Cosmos magazine interview that the same techniques (and many of the same people like Assange) were used against him in the Climategate non-scandal.
There’s little doubt that Vlad and his willing helpers will continue to do as much as they can to increase divisions and enable forces that want to take us back. We’ll have to keep our wits about us.
One thing I worry a little bit about is – what happens if the nomination is effectively wrapped up (at least as far as the pundits are concerned) in mid-March? The convention would still be months away, and the election even further away. Would people get too apathetic? Moving the process up so much has lots of potential downsides…
Cheers,
Scott.
J R in WV
@zhena gogolia:
They do want Bernie Sanders to be the Democratic nominee, and then they won’t care who wins the general election, both candidates will be Russian Stooges, Bernie AND Trump. Bernie was a Soviet stooge in the long ago, and now he’s a Russian stooge, because the Russians have all that information from when Sanders worked for the Soviets.
Just my $0.02 — if Sanders is the Dem candidate, I’m thinking we might as well all ask for Asylum in Canada, or Somewhere Far Away. ‘Cause Russia will own the whole world but for the EU…
Kay
@low-tech cyclist:
Substantially more than Gillibrand. And Senators make about 170k, so the rest is other income. Her husband’s probably. But Gillbrand’s husband didn’t report any income, which lowered their combined gross- he maybe stays home with their children?
Bernie! You’re up! Now I’m actually curious why Sanders hasn’t released.
Steve in the ATL
@Kay: because he gets paid in rubles
tobie
@Marcopolo: Yes, AOC and Pressley would fit the bill but Davids and McGrath do not. And we had some run-offs and primaries in 2018 that really were not worth the resources invested in them. Did the runoff between Lizzie Fletcher and Laura Moser add energy to the race? Or did it drain resources? And can we afford in 2020, a Presidential year, to defend seats held by incumbents deemed insufficiently pure by Our Revolution / Justice Dems? I still give to the DCCC because I cannot keep track of every individual race and that’s why party organizations are valuable.
ETA: I just saw that a Republican has announced that he’ll run against Fletcher in TX-7. I’m be sending what money I can to individual candidates and to the party, which will be keeping an eye out for Democrats in swing districts.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: it is just plain weird. I doubt he did anything illegal, the only explanation that makes sense (to me) is that something in the last ten years makes Jane look bad wrt that college she ran into the ground, unless he’s really silly enough to think he’d lose cultists because he’s relatively wealthy
rikyrah
@Jay:
The States Attorney (in other parts of the country, called the DA) refused herself from the case.
More context- the Chicago Police Department HATES Kim Foxx, because she brought the charges in the Laquan McDonald murder. Not only the officer who murdered him, but also the officers who lied about it.
She has been truly investigating every questionable cop shooting.
So, there is your background.
But, it’s not just the police that she is up against…there are prosecutors in her office who had no problem with how things were before Foxx was elected…
Hence the 16 charges against Smollet.
Folks told her…something don’t smell right…She took a look and was like…
the Chicago Police Department done phucked up again…
So, the charges were dismissed and the case sealed.
Emmanuel has been acting a plum fool about this??
Completely showing his azz.
rikyrah
@Steve in the ATL:
????
Trabb's Boy
I’m fine with social media attacks against male candidates. It helps make up for the mainstream’s imbalanced “Will she be a problem for the Dems?” vs “He’s an exciting up and comer with this quirky liberal aspect!” schtick.
I do not believe I am the only woman who is pissed as hell and sick of the male entitlement in politics and government. Far as I’m concerned, Beto and Butty and Bernie and Biden can just get stuffed until the ERA is part of the constitution.
GC
I’ll be perfectly happy to have Sanders as the nominee, and my kids would be thrilled. That said, my preference would be for Warren, with the reservations expressed by MMM. If she can campaign and fund raise in a way that actually gets her the nomination, those reservations would certainly be put to rest.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That’s what I think it is. Because so far these tax returns are completely reasonable – it’s mostly senate salary. Klobachur’s husband makes around 120 if their combined is 290. Wouldn’t it be funny if Bernie was the richest?
Cckids
@schrodingers_cat: I agree. And, this may be an unpopular opinion, but I’m not sure he’d be better than Trump. Whichever candidate takes over, they have a gargantuan task ahead to clear away Trump’s shitstorm, and will also get blamed by the Republicans and the media for conditions that will be caused by Trump’s policies. Not only do I not believe Bernie is up to it, he could very well make things worse due to incompetence.
Mnemosyne
Add me to the list of people who are keeping an open mind until at least December. I will try to point out bullshit when I see it, but really my only firm “no” is the guy who’s not even a Democrat but wants to use our party’s money and connections to promote himself over actual Democrats. No moochers.
J R in WV
@UncleEbeneezer:
I contribute to Democratic candidates, most of whom win their elections. Not all, but many. So I get phone calls and letters from the Democratic Ccongressional CC, Senatorial CC, Gubernatorial Campaign Committee, Legislative CC, etc, etc.
I tell all of them I’m not at all interested in contributing to a committee who will then use my money for their own purposes rather than for my purposes. Especially the DCCC, since they decided they won’t ever support a candidate that beats out an incumbent. Fuck That!!!
I use Act Blue and I do contributions to House Candidates, and Senatorial candidates, whom I investigate and personally approve of.
That’s MY $0.02…
Marcopolo
@tobie: Well, we will just have to disagree then. I have never given to the DCCC but I did give to 38 (yes that number is correct) different D house candidates in 2018. Nineteen won and since none of them were incumbents and many of them were the longest of long shots I think a .500 record is pretty cool. I’ve already given to one of those long shots (Audrey Denny in CA1 along with Dan McReady in the NC redo) for 2020. Also, I tend to believe competitive primaries aren’t necessarily unhealthy and that there are a shit-ton more financial resources out there (particularly with the advent of AcBlue & online donations) now than there were 10 years ago. Thinking back, I don’t think I ever gave political campaigns much money prior to 2004 when the ability to donate on line actually became a thing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
so would trump, and his kids
Jay
@Hildebrand:
When you are “running” to be the Democratic Party Cantidate for any position, there is nothing what so ever to be gained by slagging Hillary Clinton. In 2019-2020 it makes as much sense as “mentioning the War”,
( Faulty Towers ref.)
If a Cantidate or their Campaign thinks Hillary Clinton made mistakes, then they should just keep their mouths shut and not make those mistakes, or new ones.
When discussing the 2016 election, Russian Ratfucking, Vote Supression and Vote Protection are all subjects where a cantidate won’t make any enemies on “this side”,
smintheus
It ought to be possible to talk about the apparent gaps between candidates’ records while in office and how they are now presenting themselves, without being accused of taking part in a nefarious conspiracy. The former is truth, the latter is fiction. Sometimes primary season fiction is aspirational, but it’s still fiction.
I for one am sick of the same old thing election after election: boosters cheering on their candidates rather than examining them. Cheering for candidates is not what primaries exist for. They exist so voters can scrutinize candidates, hold them accountable, and make their wishes and expectations known. Primaries aren’t for concealing where our candidates are lacking, or for shaming other voters into silence for saying “That’s not good enough”.
If people want mindless cheering, why not just go to a baseball game? You’re not obliged to critique a pitcher’s fielding. You do have to take note that your candidate always voted against the thing he is now demanding be passed into law. It’s your goddamn job as a voter.
Mnemosyne
@Hildebrand:
Speaking strictly for myself, it drives me bonkers because (a) she won the popular vote by more than 3 million and (2) at least two of the “firewall” states she lost, WI and MI, had a huge amount of voter suppression with many African-Americans thrown off the voter rolls just in time for the presidential election.
People who claim that Hillary lost WI because she didn’t campaign there don’t give a shit that THOUSANDS OF THEIR FELLOW AMERICANS WERE DENIED THEIR RIGHT TO VOTE. And it horrifies me that people don’t give a shit about that.
Voter suppression is real. Thousands of people who had been voting for decades were DELIBERATELY blocked from voting in 2016. I can’t understand why people aren’t as enraged by that as I am and would rather blame Hillary Clinton’s campaign mistakes than the sudden and suspicious drop in Black voter participation.
J R in WV
@Steve in the ATL:
So short, so on point, so sweet and accurate!
Thanks, sometimes we fully agree!
eclare
@rikyrah: Awesome!
tobie
@J R in WV:
That’s not true. The rule they’re considering has to do with vendors working with challengers to incumbents this cycle. The rule doesn’t say anything about incumbents who gained office by challenging the previous Democratic office-holder.
@Marcopolo: Happy to disagree. I guess I gave to 435 Democratic House candidates last time around because in addition to individual donations to roughly 20 candidates I gave to the DCCC. A worthwhile investment indeed with 40 seats gained.
J R in WV
@Mnemosyne:
[S]he won the popular vote by more than 3 million [votes] ,,,
People who claim that Hillary lost WI because she didn’t campaign there don’t give a shit that THOUSANDS OF THEIR FELLOW AMERICANS WERE DENIED THEIR RIGHT TO VOTE. …
Thousands of people who had been voting for decades were DELIBERATELY blocked from voting in 2016.
Jay
@rikyrah:
I know that part of it,
But if Rahm didn’t call for a full release on why the charges were dropped,
The ABC twitter is just playing a gotcha, by stating she agrees with Rahm.
I’m pretty sure that there’s a big smoking gun in there that will paint the CPD and the Prosecuters liable and leave the City vulnerable for some more millions of dollars.
If Rahm didn’t call for the release, then she’s just saying what we are all saying, and that is sunshine is the best disinfectant.
dopey-o
@Don Beal:
In which case, I will proudly march into the voting booth and slit both of my wrists. Then drink poison and shoot myself in the head, twice.
Mnemosyne
@smintheus:
I’m okay with people talking about the gap between how the candidates present themselves and the truth, but we also need to be cognizant of the fact that some people are willing and able to take a small grain of truth and twist it into a lie.
Did you see the whole thing about Beto accepting donations from the oil and gas industry? Was it “true”? Well, sure, it was “true” in the sense that he received about 3 percent of his total 2018 donations from private citizens who work in the oil and gas industries. But is it “true” in the sense that it seems plausible that Beto will be kowtowing to the oil and gas industry based on less than $30K in donations out of the $79 million overall that he received? Does that seem like a reasonable conclusion based on the facts?
And yet there are still Berners running around Twitter insisting that $30K out of $79 million is disqualifying, and claiming that you can’t argue that it’s not disqualifying because the dollar amounts are facts!
Bobby Thomson
@tobie:
That really, really doesn’t make it any better.
jl
Things will get somewhat (just ‘somewhat’) better after the debates start. Right now we have a lot of political operatives from several sources (media, interest groups, campaign organizations of individual candidates) throwing out a lot of chum to see if they can take a bite of some candidate they don’t like.
So, regardless of the merits of the recent accusations against Biden, I did see that one of the accusers said that she is a Sanders supporter and doesn’t want Biden to run. Anti-progressive forces periodically put out spates of attack ‘news’ and ‘analysis’ pieces against BS and Warren.
I don’t think much reason to worry about most of it. Will be a brave new world after debates start, and Democratic primary voters start making up their minds and can respond to polls with more information. Then the primaries will start. That will produce its own kind of factionalism, but at least based on actual records of what candidates have done and said during the campaign.
Jay
@Another Scott:
The scary thing for me about the Whylie interview, is how anti-radicalization online data tracking, manipulation of social media and news feeds, to target ISIL recruits,
Was flipped 180 to create an extremist army and weaponize them in elections.
And that software and action model is out there for anyone willing to pay for it.
And as I have posted many times before, both Social Media Companies and Governments have no interest in neutering that.
Bobby Thomson
@rikyrah: and you have dudebros like Sam Stein, Ryan Lizza, and Chris Cillizza (which should but doesn’t embarrass the others) falling over themselves to say how good her number makes Buttigeig look. And the FTFNYT using her picture for their article on big money donors, despite 98% of her contributions being under $100.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: the dumb “donors with jobs in an industry == industry support” gotcha has been a popular line of attack for some years now, always hated it, glad Beto called BS
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@rikyrah: That’s a nice haul – and def a few juicers included in the 218k who donated to Kamala in Q1!
98%<$100, we got more to give!
Fair Economist
@J R in WV:
The DCCC won’t support a candidate *against* an incumbent, but they’ll support a candidate who beats one once they’ve won the primary.
I rarely donate to them because I like to target my donations for “stretch goals” or as rewards for tough votes, but don’t exaggerate their flaws.
Jay
@dopey-o:
Are you then going to crawl into a black gym bag and zip it closed behind you like a common anti-Putin Russian?
smintheus
@Mnemosyne: I agree with you on that point, and I couldn’t give a crap about his oil industry donations, but it’s not quite the distinction I’m making. Campaigning is campaigning; candidates change their methods, regret doing some earlier things, and generally try to appear less compromised than perhaps they are. It’s a game of mirrors, sooner or late, for almost all candidates who get elected.
For me what really matters is what politicians do with power. If your actions in power contradict your self presentation, then I have ample skepticism. My problem with O’Rourke is his record of voting in Congress, which is far more “centrist” (pro-business/anti-regulation) than his current metamorphosis as a progressive.
Bobby Thomson
@Hildebrand:
Oh just fuck the hell off. She got more votes than any white dude ever has or probably ever will get in history. The “moment” was it was the first presidential election since 1964 with no Voting Rights Act. The “moment” was a bunch of guys whose day job was sexual harassment were allowed to slant news coverage. The “moment” was she got ratfucked six ways from Sunday and that jackass Comey let himself get bullied into throwing the election. The “moment” was the thoroughly biased New York Times lied to its readers about the Trump campaign.
Seriously, go fuck yourself up the ass sideways with a rusty chainsaw. I have no more patience for that bullshit.
Fair Economist
I am wondering if the DCCC “blacklist” is intended to block r*tfuckers like the Justice Dems without specifically saying that. They’ve never had trouble with organizations working for primary challengers before.
Bobby Thomson
@Fair Economist: no, that’s the old policy, which was not great but not as bad as the new policy. Any vendor who works for a primary challenger is now blacklisted and can’t get work from any candidate who takes money from the DCCC. That’s some McCarthyist HUAC level bullshit.
Bobby Thomson
@Fair Economist: it is. And it’s so clumsy they’re ultimately going to have to pull it.
Major Major Major Major
@Bobby Thomson: so… nothing Hillary could have done differently would have mattered?
Nicole
At this point it’s still early. I have my favorites, but I plan to try to go hear as many candidates speak as I can, give my $10 a month to as many as I can and see how it shakes out. Though freely admit I automatically favor the XXs, with the exception of Gabbard.
And I am so, so, so tired of men telling us women how women should feel about the different ways men touch us, none of which are ways men touch male colleagues. If I don’t get to tell you how it feels to get hit in the balls, you don’t tell me how it feels to have a man I don’t know smell my hair.
Jay
@Major Major Major Major:
Probably not.
If you read the Whylie article, this wasn’t a campaign of a few months. Aggregate IQ and Cambridge spent years building a US extremist army that votes.
99% of what we now know about all the kinds of ratfucking that took place in 2016 came out after the vote, and there’s more to come.
Mayur
@Kathleen: take a deep breath FFS. Buttigieg said what I can easily imagine Barack Fucking OBAMA would have said if pressed on the same issue. It wasn’t even a drag on Clinton herself: it was the anodyne regret that the election came down to the candidates rather than the issues. If he had said something like “we can’t expect the voters to vote for someone just out of identification with the candidate’s status as a woman, a person of color, whatever” then you’d be in… well, actual shit that Howie Schultz has said.
Far too many people, including those we need as allies in 2020, say stupid shit about Clinton. Try crossing off everyone who’s made a quip about her campaigning in Wisconsin and see how many people are left. Buttigieg didn’t even do that.
Let’s try not to beat up on the current roster unless it’s actually definitive, yeah? Wilmer is an example and has been from the get-go; Biden is another for me, anyway, because of his failstorm of handsiness and financial industry stanning and poor previous presidential campaigning. But I’m not jumping on Harris for sheezacop, Warren for fake Indian, Gillibrand for murdering Al Franken, Booker for showing too much love to the GOP, or Beto for Will Hurd. And certainly not Buttigieg for one remark about 2016 that’s been blown way out of proportion. Let the FTFNYT and Cilizza and Howie Kurtz and Fox and all those assholes do that work. We need to show up, GOTV in favor of the best person out there, and support the rollback of the national nightmare we’re currently living, up to and beyond the 2022 midterms and the next presidential election. Keep the faith.
Mnemosyne
@smintheus:
And yet, when people talk about unfair attacks on Beto, that’s not the kind of stuff they’re talking about. They’re talking about what I just outlined. Plus the very conspiratorial spin that his lefty opponents put on his centrist/pro-business votes.
Sometimes people act differently in an executive position than they do in a legislative one, because they feel less responsibility to do what their specific constitutents or districts want. It does happen.
jk
@Bobby Thomson:
Biden has always struck me as a go along get along empty suit who never had an original or useful idea in his life. After all these years, he still hasn’t mastered the art of public speaking and he’s obviously too old for this job.
jk
@Mary G:
I’m not a Biden supporter and I find it deeply disturbing to see so many pundits rallying to his defense. I was hoping he might be shamed into not running but now I get the feeling he’ll try to tough it out with the help of his pals in the media.
Major Major Major Major
@Jay: you really don’t think there’s anything Hillary’s campaign could have done differently to get those 50,000 extra votes they needed?
B.B.A.
@Major Major Major Major: Hillary did not fail. She was failed.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@James E Powell You’re more than welcome to stay with us (in Cedar Rapids IA). I love campaigning, but just can’t do it anymore with my health issues. OTOH, what I can do, and have done in the past, is put up out-of-state campaign folks. I love doing it – if you’re interested, let me know at braunlk AT Hot Mail etc.
ETA have no idea what happened here – but you can still read it, right?
Jay
@Major Major Major Major:
I doubt it.
Wasn’t it 80,000 votes in 3 States where 250,000 likely D’s and D’s were purged from the rolls and polles were closed in Likely D districts, questionable electronic voting and places that the Russians and Cambridge had been working over for over 2 years?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/donald-trump-will-be-president-thanks-to-80000-people-in-three-states/?utm_term=.64e5f1825900
Hildebrand
@Mnemosyne: I agree – she faced wretched headwinds. I don’t think she was the first to face such voter suppression – I think it was so evident and noted because of the fact that she lost. I don’t think suppression just popped up in 2016. It was certainly worse because of the Supreme Court deciding to pretend that racial equality exists – but I don’t think we would be talking about it in the same way had she won.
All of that said, I don’t think we are doing ourselves any favors if we think the Clinton campaign was a finely tuned machine – Robby Mook needs to shoulder as much blame as anyone. We need to learn how not to make the same mistakes, knowing we are facing a tilted playing field. Why can’t we even discuss what they did well and did poorly. I’m not talking about not going to Wisconsin – jeez, that was not the problem, or at least not a top 20 problem. But we should be able to recognize that the campaign wasn’t perfect without getting slagged.
Major Major Major Major
@Jay: I may have had the topline number wrong, but my point stands that it’s a small number of people.
I guess I can just check out for the next year and a half if nothing a candidate or their campaign does, even with the benefit of hindsight, can deliver 80,000 votes.
Her campaign was imperfect. This should not be an outrageous suggestion.
Jay
@Major Major Major Major:
The whole purpose of the Aggregate/Cambridge/Russian ratfucking, is to swing a small number of people. 535 voters decided 2000.
There a Buddhist Philosophy that “everybody does the best they can”.
Sure maybe you didn’t know enough, but then, in that moment, you didn’t know enough.
Maybe you didn’t try as hard as you could, but then, you didn’t try as hard as you could for reasons, other wise you would have.
It’s fine for us, Campaigns, Cantidates to pick apart Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Campaign for flaws and errors, behind closed doors. Cantidates shouldn’t do it in public. It doesn’t win them any votes, may cost them votes, and feeds the MSM/BerniBro/Aggregate/Cambridge/Russian/Nazi/Wingnut whurlitzer.
Dan B
@Kathleen: I didn’t understand or like Pete’s comment about Hillary’s bad slogan. I also wonder if was ratf***ing. The comment about the slogan was cherrypicked from an interview in January. Has he said more about Hillary or is this a one off? If he’s said more that’s a real concern. Does he have a suggestion for what worked better? So far we only have one quote, although I vaguely recall another. But that’s the nature of rat***ing. It inflames the emotions and then we’re off and running.
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah: Well, I was never that psyched about Klobchar in the first place, but wow, that was a really, stupidly, white thing for her to say. I’m with you, that’s making me think, “Nope”.
Bobby Thomson
@Mayur:
That’s actually an excellent way of paring down the 2020 field. The ones left standing (who are smart enough to know running against Clinton is probably the worst way of securing the nomination) are pretty damn good. The rest candidly can go fuck themselves and I’m good with that.
Dan B
@Hildebrand: I believe it can be valuable to discuss how Hillary, or any other candidate, could have run a better campaign. It is just as valuable to discuss campaigns that were improbable successes. A political pro friend of mine believes that Hillary’s messaging was overmanaged by too many advisors so she came across to the moderate info voter as inauthentic. I felt she shone when she was in intimate settings and seemed different in the big stage events. Obama was brilliant in the big and the small. That’s amazing. Trump was horrifying to me in the big and small but you knew exactly who he was- an angry priviledged ass.
What gets me are people who shriek when we say their hero(ine) isn’t perfect but we might learn about how to persuade voters if we look at how our saints came across.
I’m rooting for several candidates but want to know more about them. They all seem to have shortcomings but I felt the same about Obama and still believe we can learn from his flaws (bipartisan pipe dreams) and strengths (just about everything else – almost). I want someone who inspires hope, and passion, and has pragmatic policies.
Bobby Thomson
@Major Major Major Major: No, I don’t. Everything is a trade off and course correcting in one direction costs you somewhere else. The people who think they could have done better all wanted to kiss white racist ass and take black voters for granted.
Even with the cake being baked, she came within six figures of pulling it off.
Mnemosyne
@Hildebrand:
Remember in 2012 when Karl Rove had a meltdown because Obama won a state that Rove had confidently picked for Romney?
That’s because Rove had been working behind the scenes for the previous 4 years to fix the 2012 election the exact same way the 2016 election was fixed. When the 2012 operation didn’t work, they retooled it for 2012 with Russian help.
I’m not saying that Hillary’s campaign was perfect. I’m saying that you’re critiquing the leaves on the tree in front of you while ignoring that the rest of the forest has been illegally razed to the ground.
@Major Major Major Major:
If you have a solution for getting voter IDs to people in Wisconsin when Wisconsin blatantly refuses to issue them, I’m all ears.
Bobby Thomson
@Dan B: “shriek,” huh? At least you didn’t say hysterical. The point isn’t that a heroine has been disparaged. It’s that if your reaction to 2016 is anything other than blinding rage at how the election was blatantly stolen your takes are shitty.
By the way, have you ever wondered why it’s women who are almost always “inauthentic?”
Jay
@Dan B:
He’s said a couple of things, a couple of times, about Hillary Clinton’s Campaign that are straight out of Faux NotNews memes. ( it wasn’t even her campaign slogan, it was a button slogan her supporters wore)
At best, it shows how deep the Winger Propaganda goes,
At worse, he’s trying to win Nazi votes by reinforcing Killary memes.
Mnemosyne
@Dan B:
Hey, you don’t have to believe me. Republicans say straight out that voter suppression was what handed the state to Trump:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/04/top-republican-official-says-trump-won-wisconsin-because-of-voter-id-law/
We’re going to lose over and over again if people refuse to accept that massive cheating is going on and think all we have to do is tweak our campaigns a little. Hundreds, if not thousands, of mail-in ballots were never counted in Florida in 2018 because — oopsie! Election officials forgot they were in a post office storeroom, and now it’s past the deadline. Too bad, so sad.
Now let’s all microanalyze Andrew Gillum’s campaign and see what he could have done differently to overcome the deficit caused by those discarded ballots, because I’m sure there was an easy solution the whole time, right?
@Major Major Major Major:
I’m saying the opposite of “check out.” I’m saying “go work for or donate to VoteRiders and Let America Vote and the ACLU and every other voting rights organization you can think of, or we’re going to get fucked again.”
Jay
@Mnemosyne:
???????
Mnemosyne
Okay, I’m starting to feel like Kevin Mccarthy screaming at the passing cars at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, so I’m going to wander off to other threads now. Good night.
Jay
@Mnemosyne:
Good night,
Hildebrand
@Mnemosyne: You are right, they retooled. We didn’t. We should have known they would turn it up to 11, that is how Obama’s team won, they knew they had to play a smarter game and that they couldn’t rely on the previous game plan.
Clinton was a great candidate, but once again her team didn’t put together a great campaign. They should have known the republicans were going to cheat the system any way they could, and then some. The election was shitty and unfair, but they had to have known that to win our team was going to have to out-think them (not policy wise, but tactically).
And it’s going to happen again, unless we play Sherlock to their Moriarty. We have to be smart tactically and strategically, and that takes looking at everything we did or didn’t do right.
Darkrose
@rikyrah: My first thought was that someone realized there was something hinky about the chain of evidence, and the prosecutors realized the case might fail on a technicality. Nothing that has been said since makes me think otherwise.
Also, Klobuchar needs to shut her entire mouth on this, because the CPD has been corrupt shit for my entire life, and if she doesn’t know that, she should stop talking about it right now.
Jay
@Darkrose:
As I asked earlier, but nobody’s answered, is ABC twitter “gotcha-ing” Amy?
Because if Rahm isn’t demanding full disclosure,
Then Amy’s just saying what we are all saying.
Jay
@Darkrose:
BTDub’s, “technicality”,
You realise that up until a few years ago, the CPD ran a bunch of dark site Torture Centers to get confessions from the innocents,
And up to last year, when they retired with full pensions, the CPD Drug Squad ran the drug protection racket, the robbery racket and were the biggest drug gang in ChiTown?
Darkrose
@Jay: Born and raised in Chicago: yes, I’m well aware.
In this case, I don’t know that it would be that level of bad. I’m wondering about the constant stream of leaks from the CPD about this case.
Darkrose
@Jay: I don’t remember everything Rahm’s said, but there is absolutely no reason Klobuchar needed to weigh in on this. She’s already a white lady from Minnesota, so a lot of black folks are giving her the side-eye. This says to me she’s burnishing those bipartisan, centrist credentials, which no thanks.
Jay
@Darkrose:
Amy’s actual statement, free of the ABC twitter framing, is that we should know exactly the who, what, when, where, why’s of the Jesse Smolette prosecution and why it was dropped,
($100 says it ain’t a technicality)
Not releasing the into is covering for the CPD and the Chitown prosecutors,
While dropping all charges makes it pretty clear that Jesse is one of the more innocent of all involved,
And as nobody has pointed me to anything claiming Rahm has in anyway asked for transparency,
I’m going to stick with my origional “hot take”.
ABC News is openly and transparently ratfucking a Democratic Party Cantidate.
Dan B
@Jay: You’re probably right but it seems weird that we don’t have the context. Was he talking about her campaign’s strategy? Did he believe there was a better slogan than I’m With Her? If so what? I thought it was a great little slogan – upbeat and easy for people to catch. So what is he critiquing? It can certainly come across as “Midwesterners were uncomfortable with a woman.” Is that what he means or is it something else? I’d like an answer.
J R in WV
@Mnemosyne:
[S]he won the popular vote by more than 3 million [votes] ,,,
People who claim that Hillary lost WI because she didn’t campaign there don’t give a shit that THOUSANDS OF THEIR FELLOW AMERICANS WERE DENIED THEIR RIGHT TO VOTE. …
Thousands of people who had been voting for decades were DELIBERATELY blocked from voting in 2016.
Jay
@Dan B:
#me too
Richard Guhl
@Major Major Major Major: No campaign is ever perfect. Every campaign makes missteps and suffers from flawed judgment.
To evaluate Clinton’s campaign we need to put it in context.
First, the press was playing by Clinton Rules, which magnified anything she did wrong into The Worst Thing Ever. And the press high-fived themselves every time they dinged her. Jjii
Second, in the last month of the campaign national news coverage Clinton’s was overwhelmingly negative by 7 to 1. Indeed, if the word clouds of press coverage after July were any indication, the impression you’d get was Clinton was corrupt and Trump offered policies!
Third, Comey. Fourth, misogyny. Fifth, social media garbage.
Despite, all those anchors she still garnered the most votes . But those anchors made the huge difference at the margins in MI, PA, and WI.