As someone who supported Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders, I’d rather not have to talk about my regrets. I’ve had a few, but not to few, or small, to mention. Clinton would have been a better president than Trump. Then again most of my high school students would have done a better job. Clinton may have also been more effective than Bernie Sanders. Our political support is, at best, conjecture. (I supported John Edwards for president once).
The emerging picture of Clinton’s campaign, however, is ugly. It reveals a stunningly bad disconnect with reality, and if Donna Brazile can be believed, actual cheating in the primary. Only an idiot would deny the fact that the DNC’s thumb was on the scale for Clinton. We’re now learning that the scale itself had been tampered with.
Stan Greenberg has a major takedown of her campaign at The American Prospect. Greenberg worked closely with John Podesta on Bill Clinton’s campaign, and he had more than a nodding acquaintance with Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Astonishingly, the 2016 Clinton campaign conducted no state polls in the final three weeks of the general election and relied primarily on data analytics to project turnout and the state vote. They paid little attention to qualitative focus groups or feedback from the field, and their brief daily analytics poll didn’t measure which candidate was defining the election or getting people engaged.
The models from the data analytics team led by Elan Kriegel got the Iowa and Michigan primaries badly wrong, with huge consequences for the race. Why were they not then fired? Campaign manager Robbie Mook and the analytics team argued, according to Shattered, that the Sanders vote grew “organically”—turnout was unexpectedly high and new registrants broke against Clinton. Why was that a surprise?
Campaign chair John Podesta wanted to fire Mook, but Clinton stood by him. She rightly admired previous campaigns in which big data and technology were big winners, yet in 2008 it was the candidate and his appeal more than the technical wizardry that pushed Obama over the top. David Axelrod told me that analytics adds a “great field-goal kicker”—no substitute for a strategy and compelling message.
The entire piece is well-worth reading. Greenberg is the leading advocate for appealing to working-class voters; he’s done extensive polling and focus groups on their interests and how to appeal to them.
Brazile’s piece in Politico is bound to set off more revelations. The problem starts with President Obama, the guy who appointed the odious Debbie Wasserman Shultz to head the DNC and left the part deeply in debt.
Officials from Hillary’s campaign had taken a look at the DNC’s books. Obama left the party $24 million in debt—$15 million in bank debt and more than $8 million owed to vendors after the 2012 campaign—and had been paying that off very slowly. Obama’s campaign was not scheduled to pay it off until 2016. Hillary for America (the campaign) and the Hillary Victory Fund (its joint fundraising vehicle with the DNC) had taken care of 80 percent of the remaining debt in 2016, about $10 million, and had placed the party on an allowance.
If I didn’t know about this, I assumed that none of the other officers knew about it, either. That was just Debbie’s way. In my experience she didn’t come to the officers of the DNC for advice and counsel. She seemed to make decisions on her own and let us know at the last minute what she had decided…
To pay off the debt, the party had made a deal with the Clinton campaign. The
Joint Fund-Raising Agreement between the DNC, the Hillary Victory Fund, and Hillary for America… —signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and [the odious] Robby Mook with a copy to Marc Elias—specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.
It is typical to merge the party apparatus and the presidential campaign AFTER the primary. In exchange, Clinton paid off 80% of the DNC’s debt. The deal was struck between Debbie Wasserman Shultz and Robbie Mook. This quid pro quo is not illegal, according to Donna Brazile.
The funding arrangement with HFA and the victory fund agreement was not illegal, but it sure looked unethical. If the fight had been fair, one campaign would not have control of the party before the voters had decided which one they wanted to lead. This was not a criminal act, but as I saw it, it compromised the party’s integrity.
There’s probably more to this story. I doubt Clinton will come out looking any better, but she deserves to be able to defend herself. If any good comes out of this disgusting deal, it will be a better, more transparent DNC.
And when figures come out about the lack of money in the DNC’s treasury, you’ll know why big donors aren’t exactly interested in making contributions.
Shame on DWS for not being more communicative with her fellow party officers. It seems, however, that the Clinton campaign did the responsible thing and helped bail out the party.
They raided the state funding. That’s why there was nothing for downballot races. They fucked us hard.
You got it exactly wrong “state” funding in this case is just an excuse for big donors to get by the limitations on campaign contributions and to therefore to increase their own influence.
Clinton did a lot of working helping get downballot candidates elected.
Downballot Dems did poorly. 🙁
Who? When? That’s just not reality based Christopher.
I don’t recall specifics, but I do recall noting at the time that Hillary was out campaigning for and with other Dems while Bernie was not.
Who did she campaign for in 2016 other than herself? Bernie campaigned for her after she won as well as Democrats up and down the ballot all over the country. Before and after 2016.
I’m sorry, if you really want me to be the one to answer I’ll have to look back, but I know it was discussed at the time.
It’s not responsible if you demand inappropriate leverage in response for your assistance. It sounds like the Clinton folks knew the DNC was busted out (NSFW), and moved in for the exploit.
I really appreciate the measured approach of Mark’s post and the narrow frame of analysis he makes focusing on the malpractice of the campaign and the party. This isn’t relitigating the primary-this is learning from easily preventable mistakes that have hindered the effectiveness of the party as a whole.
The Obama campaign raided the party creating the situation where the Clinton campaign had to bail it out. I hate to give George W Bush credit, but he worked closely with the RNC chairs he appointed to raise funds to supply their downballot races and state level party’s with funding. Bush even made sure RNC and RNSC money got to the likes of Lincoln Chaffee to ensure he had a working majority to govern.
Trump is the lowest rated President in the history of polling, as are the entire Republicans congressional leadership. Yet our party is not faring much better with independents or voter focus groups in the states that count. Our party has the lowest level of seats at all levels of government, the lowest levels of Governorships, and the lowest level of statehouses in nearly a century. This is not the time to assume that anti-Trump sentiment is sufficient to rebuild the party.
We have to admit its leaders made flaws, these mistakes are learning opprtunities, and it’s time to find a way to power the DNC with small donors and pump the money almost exclusively into building 50 competent state level parties as Howard Dean successfully did during his chairmanship.
No more hacks looking to make an extra buck and get their consultants friends hooked up. Get real grassroots campaign professionals who are committed to party building 24/7.
Kate Donaghue for DNC chair.
She’s been asked to run for state chair in previous rounds – won’t take the bait:(
Per usual, I have to be the contrarian here.
First, I don’t think Greenbergs analysis of the polling is any better than Clinton’s decision to stand by Mooks strategy in the final weeks of the campaign. There is always somebody looking to fire the campaign manager in the home stretch because they think he/she is going in the wrong direction. Never to early to panic is the unofficial motto of the party. Monday morning quarterbacking is always going to be monday morning quarterbacking. Clinton made the call on Mook and on the strategy. It may have been the wrong call, but doing as Greenberg directed (which can also be seen as continuing a habitual payday for pollsters…) may not have changed a thing.
Secondly, and here’s where I’m fairly clear: Hillary bailed out the party. Would you rather she didn’t? What was the alternative? Going into the election broke? Going in a step behind? Going in with barely a party at all? Who was going to do it, if not her? Brazile, in the politico piece, glosses over Sanders role:
So it seems like, in keeping with the rest of his campaign, Sen Sanders was willing to let the party… a party to which he had only newly arrived… bern. As far as I’m concerned, that was his opportunity to do something and he sold it, for 27 pieces of silver.
The only possible unethical thing that Hillary has done in this, and I’m not conceding the point just yet, only making note of it, is maybe make false or misleading misrepresentation regarding the ultimate disposition of the state party funds. I’m not clear on the terms of the fundraising, the expectations and the statements made so I’m not willing to say yeah or nay on that…. and I don’t trust Brazile’s breathless-cliffhanger-docu-drama style of writing.
Finally, and I think most importantly, this is further proof of the pernicious effect of unlimited money in politics: The Republicans, who have more money than smarts, put the squeeze on the Dems (who have more smarts than money) in 2012 forcing over-extension of the party’s credit. Wasserman Schultz dropped the ball on fundraising, making that problem much much worse at, likely, the worst possible time. Wasserman Schultz should have been out there retiring the 2012 debt ASAP. She didn’t. Hillary did. Who else was gonna?
The Inevitable Quibbles
1. Greenberg wasn’t Monday morning quarterbacking. He was connected to the campaign throughout. Both he and Podesta, the campaign chair, saw problems that Mook wasn’t addressing, and not just 3 weeks before. In other reading I’ve done, Mook refused to share information and results with others. Greenberg’s piece is well worth reading.
2. Quid pro quo is the problem. If Hillary helped with the funding without taking over the DNC, then no problem. But Mook, who did the negotiating with the DNC, insisted on control.
3. The debt would have been retired. That would have required big donors to step up, but that’s the kind of thing they do. It’s just a lot of work.
Clinton comes off better in Brazile’s piece. Greenberg’s piece, like hers, comes down on Mook. Ultimately, it’s Clinton’s fault because she should have been in charge of her campaign, but the implication is that she was a lousy manager who let her subordinates do things in her name that shouldn’t have been done.
I think Greenberg is Monday Morning quarterbacking now… saying ‘if only they had listened to my advice then.” it’s a little ‘told you so,’ without justification. I read the article. It’s cherrypicking picayune shit. Particularly galling is the notion that Clinton was ‘surprised’ by the voters because she relied too heavily on ‘data analytics’. This would be true ONLY if the pollsters weren’t equally surprised. Damn near every last one of them were as surprised at the outcome just as much as those who used ‘data analytics.’
Let’s try a little thought experiment: According to Brazile, the ‘agreement’ was signed in August of 2015. We’re finding out about it November of 2017? (in advance of her book and not, seemingly, out of any real loyalty to the party). If Hillary Clinton won the election (she did get more votes) would we be hearing about it at all? Why is that, do you think?
Or an even better thought experiment… If Sen Sanders wasn’t a clueless old goat with his head so far up his own… ahem…. If Sanders, or, in fact, any of the other potential candidates in 2015, wanted to know about this August 2015 agreement… how hard would they have had to look to find out about it? The party seems a little big — and certainly all too unruly — to fit snugly, and secretly, in Hillary’s pocket. Seems pretty likely that anyone wanting to put the brakes on Hillary Clintons potential nomination could have nosed around, figured it out and waved this around in December ’15 or January ’16. The Democratic party is not known for uniformity of purpose… so retroactively trashing Clinton for for financial ninjitsu seems suspect.
Yes and the DNC went and outsourced that work to Hillary Clinton. Now some want to say she did something wrong when they were, apparently, all to happy to let her shoulder the burden at the time.
Check the Original Sources
You should read the original sources, particularly Greenberg. They both contain answers to your criticisms. I don’t really want to dig up the info for the sake of argument.
1. Greenberg has been concerned for a long time about white working class voters. His reason for writing is the fear that Dems will fall into the same trap(s). As you know, campaigns conduct internal polling (and often focus groups). They do this because their polling uses different questions, which results in more specific, usable information than public pollsters.
2. Your “thought experiment” would be better with facts. Brazile actualy talks about how it took time a lot of time and searching to find the agreement signed by the parties.
3. You personify the DNC here, an abstraction. Who signed off on the agreement every member of the Democratic National committee?
And that’s, exactly, my criticism of him: ‘white working class’ is an identity…. but what’s his response…? Stop the‘identity politics’ Hillary. That’s the hegemonic white-boy compromise: “Do everything we say, and we’ll agree to call it compromise.”
Again, I read his article and found it to be nothing more than an exactingly clear example of confirmation bias.
You think the large amounts of money flowing from the Clinton campaign to the DNC doesn’t constitute a fact? (which flow is federally monitored…?) How hard would it be to find out what the Clinton campaign was doing? Not very hard at all….
Really, Mark, I’m disappointed in you….
And it gets curiouser and curiouser...
This article was updated to include this sentence, which seems important.
I actually have no problem with Clinton taking over the DNC as she was the heir apparent to a President who at least in hindsight should have exercised more influence himself. People seem to forget that the DNC itself actually has very little to do with running the caucus and primary process. They communicate how they will credential convention delegates, but then the state government and parties actually execute their selection.
Right there is the whole entire problem. We don’t have those in a democracy, and we certainly shouldn’t have them in the party after it.
I don’t have a problem with it as long as others can challenge it.
And do you seriously think it a fair fight if one side is funding the organization in charge of arbitration?
That fact alone probably scared off other credible challengers. Had Clinton been offered a similar arrangement in 2008, it would have been absolutely fair for Obama and Edwards to cry foul.
This isn’t about Bernie v. Hillary. This is about smart v dumb and right v wrong.
I think we have to remember that DNC has a couple of different meanings: The institutional structure with staff and offices which require money to operate, which Clinton helped fund, and the actual national committee of elected state party representatives which would do any arbitration. In fact even that is done not by the DNC as by the convention and delegates serving on relevant committees are seated in proportion to the vote share of the candidates. Clinton would have a slight edge given this formula, but not an overwhelming one. I would need a specific example of a decision that was made by the party that both would have been made differently without Clinton money and had a material impact on the outcome. You should know by now I have no patience for speculation or appearances.
I seriously think that Bernie Sanders was never a viable candidate. He has never been a member of the party. He refuses to join our party now. He was utterly unprepared for the debates. He did none of the things that serious candidates do for years prior to a presidential run.
There is NO comparison between John Edwards or Barack Obama in 2008 and Bernie Sanders in 2016.
I’m sorry, but it looks to me as though this is ONLY about
“Bernie v. Hillary”. I reject the assertion that there is any more “smart v. dumb” or “right v. wrong” in the 2016 campaign than in any other losing campaign.
Mr. Sanders did not perform well in the primaries, and that had nothing to do with anything being rigged. It was, instead, caused by having no organization, no ground game, no specifics, no track record (that anybody knew anything about), and no substance.
The difference between “vision” and “fantasy” is that it is possible to develop and execute a concrete strategy for making the former a reality. Mr. Sanders offered pure fantasy. His go-to “strategy” was his “political revolution” that was going to magically transform the world because millions of people would magically hear and respond to the fantasy. Fantasy and, of course, anger. Mr. Sanders spent a lot time telling us how angry he is, apparently intending to capture angry voters.
That’s the sort of thing that maybe works in fantasy fiction. It doesn’t result in good governance. It doesn’t even win elections.
Mr. Sanders LOST the primary campaign, BIG, all by himself. Too many of us here are still unable to admit that reality. We instead blame scapegoats and endlessly repeat lies about “Wall Street sellouts” and of course Hillary Clinton herself (when not blaming Bill Clinton or Chelsea Clinton or Chelsea Clinton’s husband or anything or anybody else associated with “Clinton”).
I think “heir apparent” is a shorthand way of saying that Hillary Clinton was the only serious, viable, and prepared candidate available to the Democratic Party in 2016. Joe Biden would have been an awesome candidate. Joe Biden chose not to run because of personal reasons. Nobody forced him out of the race.
So now we apparently all go through several more rounds of circular firing squads — and then wonder why we have no support, no contributions, and no candidates.
Donna Brazile is a former media personality on a book tour. The claims made in said book have even less substance than the claims made by Ms. Clinton herself in her own tome. These are book tours, for crying out loud. Do we also weep and cry about what happened in the most recent episode of our favorite soap opera or TV show?
I strongly encourage any of us falling prey to the current media hysteria to read or re-read, for example, any of the excellent Robert Caro biographies of Lyndon Johnson. If we think we care about improper use of campaign organizations or improper manipulation of campaign resources, learn more about Richard J. Daley or Boston’s own Kevin White.
What I see in all this wailing and gnashing of teeth is a whole lot of sour grapes, scapegoating, and a willful and dangerous disregard for or ignorance of history. Not to mention a shit-ton pure unadulterated sexism.
For a community that tells ourselves how much we want to move on and leave 2016 behind, we certainly do a good job of wallowing in this noxious swamp.
With “friends” like our CDS victims here at BMG and elsewhere, we Democrats don’t need enemies.
Sanders DID manage to keep the primary season going almost to the end, but in 2015 when this agreement was made he was not expected to be a major player.
After reading
I laughed so hard it took me a while to regain my composure.
Yes, Senator Sanders was not and will never be a Wall Street sell out. That’s why some opposed him. He stood for the working class and did not pit one identity group against another so that they would see each other as the enemy and not see Wall Street as the enemy. Goldman Sachs would not pay him fifty cents to speak to them and if they did, he’d be transparent with what he said and not have to hide it, as the Wall Street sell outs did.
We can be the party of the working class, win back the house, senate, and White House, or we can continue to be the party of the elite professional class, serving their desires for social justice where it suits them and ignoring the working class unless they need canvassers and phone bank volunteers – resulting in the political reality we see today where the working class is “up for grabs” and will elect a tyrant who promised to care for them.
Apparently JTM is laughing so hard he forgot to actually look at the vote totals. Those vote totals won’t change no matter how many times the “Wall Street sellout” lie is repeated, nor how many times the same old dogma is repeated.
Bernie Sanders LOST the primary all on his own. The outcome of the primary was never in question because Mr. Sanders LOST every vote that mattered.
Funny how our self-professed champion of the “working class” pays so little attention to how the working class actually voted.
I guess he’s too busy laughing.
That is not true. He was pushed out after major donors lined up behind Clinton and even Obama told him that he should not run. This was the reporting around the time that his decision was finalized. That story evolved into him not running because of grieving over Beau, which was a neater story for everyone.
I don’t understand this type of commentary. It is incredibly dumb.
For an old socialist with no national presence to make a race of it and to raise outstanding amounts of money is extraordinary. The national conversation on many issues has been fundamentally changed by him running. And his performance compared to what would be expected (i.e. ~5-10% of the vote total) more than anything else demonstrated the problems with the Democratic party as an institution and Clinton as a candidate. The dude didn’t even enter the race with the thought of winning, and he still changed the game.
This is funny.
Who is the President now?
Sure, go ahead and reread your post.
I preferred Sanders but never expected him to win. I like what his campaign demonstrated about the desires of a large part of the electorate, especially young people and independents. I’m happy to see him leading on important issues now and helping to elect progressive candidates at all levels. I’m also furious about the allegations that he cost Clinton the Presidency (half as many of his primary supporters supported the GOP candidate in the general than did Clinton’s supporters in 2008). More than anything the Sanders candidacy should have been a huge wakeup call, and one the DNC is certainly not learning – electing the inexperienced Perez and then recently purging left-leaning members. If we want to believe that Clinton’s campaign was good or that the DNC did a good job, we’re probably looking at losing House seats in 2018.
At this point I think we would have to try really hard to lose House seats in 2018. Even under normal circumstances the non-WH party almost always gains in the midterms. Trump’s ratings are in the toilet with no legislative accomplishments to his name. There are already a record number of financially serious Dem challengers for House seats and there have been several high-profile GOP members who have announced they will not run.
This issue actually hasn’t nothing to do with Bernie. This screwed over Martin O Malley who was a serious candidate with more policy successes than either Bernie or Hillary. It may have kept Biden out of the race as much as those personal reasons since the party money was essentially frozen for Hillary. It may have kept nearly a dozen others from running. We know they didn’t have this agreement with her in 2008 and we had a far better nomination process with more choices because of it.
This process was totally unfair to Biden who was still debating as of late 2015 whether to enter the race while that agreement with Hillary was already inked. Unfair to anyone who may have wanted by to run that didn’t because she and the DNC worked in tandem to clear the deck.
The fact that she did so poorly despite all those flaws you listed for Sanders showed how unpopular and flawed she was perceived by her own primary electorate. She won Democratic primary voters by about the same popular vote margin that she beat Trump. That they flocked to an independent outsider who was almost entirely unknown outside of Vermont when he ran demonstrates how shallow the depth of her supposed support and inevitably really was.
This isn’t about Bernie or Hillary. We should never crown our nominee. That’s the major lesson of the McGovern commission that lead to primaries in the first place. Tip and the DNC were neutral even when a challenger went up against an incumbent in 1980. Leadership should remain neutral in 2020 and beyond.
Biden is no victim here and you seem to assert a lot of facts not in evidence. Do you really not think a sitting popular VP would have done just fine for himself, and possibly even gotten the nomination?
I think it was pretty obvious Obama and Clinton loyalists and donors froze him out. That has been openly reported. It’s also obvious that Hillary had an agreement with the DNC before Biden mad a decision, which also seems to put him at a disadvantage. Maybe he could’ve beaten her-Bernie nearly did despite the head start she had. It’s the head start that is problematic, even if the outcome itself isn’t in doubt.
Even Al Gore did not have this kind of relationship with the DNC, nor did Bill Clinton or others close to the administration try and freeze Bill Bradley out of the race.
Remember that Clinton needed the big donors in the primary campaign against Sanders. The limit for direct donations to a candidate was $2,700. With the DNC agreement, big Clinton donors could give an additional $353,400 to the DNC, of which $320,000 would be sent right away to Clinton’s Hillary Victory Fund.
Sanders, instead, raised money from small donors. Without the DNC, Hillary would not have had the funds to mount a credible primary campaign.
This has been discussed on BMG at the time. What we did not know, and are learning now, was that the DNC agreement with Clinton had a secret rider that was not shared with Sanders – giving Clinton discretion over setting DNC strategy, hiring DNC staff, etc.
“We were not offered veto power on staff at the DNC, I can tell you that” – Jeff Weaver, former Sanders campaign manager.
Why did Obama not intervene to keep the DNC neutral, early on, given that Biden was interested in possibly running? Why did Biden, with all his connections, not push back or prepare his ground better? That remains a mystery to me.
Raising money from small donors, as I recall, was Obama’s advantage over Clinton. With a large number of small donors, a candidate can “go to the well” many times for more. Clinton’s strategy of big donors means “once and done”.
There are a lot of whys here, with Obama, Biden, Warren…….
I think you’re thinking about England and the Royal Family. We fought a revolution to get out of that sort of thing.
There are political, as opposed to hereditary, designated successors all the time. Of course, it’s ultimately up to the voters to decide whether to continue the line which makes all the difference.
Back when I was a Republican, I cringed when my fellow Republicans told me that Bob Dole was the guy we needed to support because it was his turn. I felt the same way (even worse) when Democrats made the same fatal mistake.
Interestingly… 2006 was the last year the Democrats raised less money than the Republicans. https://www.opensecrets.org/parties/
Thanks for bringing anti-Semitic dog-whistling to the site, Petr!
Jewish tradition takes no account whatsoever of traditional Christian mythos, but thank’s for playing. As a consolation prize you you can kiss my ass.
nah.
Read it again Charley. joetaemi is right. I’ll give Petr the benefit of the doubt that it wasn’t intentional, but the reference is to the betrayal of Jesus. If Trump said that …. you get the idea.
No. I don’t get the idea. The reference was to a messianic revolutionary who turned his back on his messiah for silver.
Whatever the story of who paid him to do it or why isn’t at issue here. It’s a fucking analogy comparing Bernie Sanders to Judas Iscariot and nothing more.
You’re looking for something that isn’t there and then trying to use that shut me up. Won’t work. Thanks for playing, also… you can have the same consolation prize.
You’re welcome Petr, It was my pleasure to give you the benefit of the doubt. Have a wonderful day.
Well, turns out that the betrayal and death of Jesus is kind of a speciality of mine. So I know that petr is referring to Judas Iscariot in Matthew 26:15, not “Jews”. (OTOH there is plenty of that in the Gospel of John.) I know the reference, and I usually know anti-semitism when I see it.
Nothing good comes of getting your financing from big donors and then using loop holes so you get around the $2700 maximum. My biggest doubt about Obama in 2008 was that he rejected public campaign financing.
We all laughed at Lessig but he was right, and this story proves it.
I’m pretty sure Hillary did exactly what everyone here attacked Evan Falchuk for doing with his party. Just throwing that out there.
What’s lost in all this as well is that President Obama left the party deeply in debt but still managed to take his family on posh summer vacations on Martha’s Vineyard, sign a $60 Million dollar book deal, and has moved on to $400,000 speaking fees. All this while he still receives a pension of $200K from the taxpayers.
Oh, and did I mention that he bailed out the banks but not the people whose homes were repossessed?
At the same time, the previous Democratic president was “broke” once he left office but today, he and his spouse are worth over $100 million.
We are left with a political party sending its members hundreds of emails a day asking for donations because this party represents them and needs their money while the leaders of the party live like kings and deliver squat to the people who got them there.
The party is still in control of the Wall Street sell outs, and too many Democrats support it.
Are you suggesting that they should be personally bailing out the party because given contribution limits that would actually be illegal?
One of the many downsides to bailing out of the public financing of campaigns is that all this mega-fund raising apparently left the party broke and more in thrall to big donors.
I am suggesting that these deals are too cute by half, and it would be better to avoid them. The Sanders campaign matched Hillary’s dollar for dollar in small donations. A DNC that actually bothered with a small donor, grassroots oriented strategy and a commitment to be the one party not taking Wall Street money would go along way toward restoring trust with the base of the party as well as independents. It could then be a lean and decentralized vessel for overseeing 50 state party organizations that actually are grassroots and small donor powered, focused on the long game, and organizing everywhere.
We also forget that there were once organizations that actually allowed for class solidarity and delivered blue collar votes. They were called unions, and maybe like they do in the Labour party, they should actually have seats on our party’s board and votes at our party’s convention. The DNC should actively help unions organize and vice a versa. Let’s become a true worker’s party.
Otherwise if corporate America can choose between Republican and Republican Lite, it will choose genuine Republican. No matter how racist genuine Republican gets, the tax cuts are all that matter to the Wall Street crowd. They utterly failed to deliver the White House to our last nominee despite favoring her 2-1 in donations.
> It could then be a lean and decentralized vessel for overseeing 50 state party organizations that actually are grassroots and small donor powered, focused on the long game, and organizing everywhere.
It is essential that the DNC be neutral between big-donor and litte-donor supported candidates.
In primary campaigns, the DNC should, as a matter of internal governance, not function as a back-door vehicle for big-donor candidates to elude the $2,700 personal contribution limit. Money above a certain threshold should be divvied equally between candidates.
Unions do in fact have official ties to the party. Not sure about the national, but at the state level in MA there are labor add-on seats to the DSC.
I am looking at the optics from the point of view of a struggling working class voter when the Democratic Party asks me for a financial donation and my vote in the hopes that I will have a better life with them in charge. It appears that only they get the better life. I just get more requests for donations and my vote.
I see no reason why any small donor should give to the DNC after this. You’re contribution as an individual member is clearly not valued.
The party is focused on fund raising. Once elected, the candidates adopt opulent lifestyles and look forward to multimillionaire status with book deals and “speaking fees” provided by the wealthy class that owns them.
No, not all Democrats, just too damn many.
I may have told this before, but it bears repeating. I was invited to attend a “reception and dinner” for the New Democrats Coalition that was held at the The Oceanaire Seafood Room in Boston. Eight Democratic House members would be there.
They wanted me to pony up $1,250 to attend. I could be a “host” and “annual supporter” for $6,000.
I wrote back and told them that I make $15 a hour and as such $1,250 is about two weeks pay – and that’s clearly out of my league to attend such an event of DEMOCRATIC legislators who, in their words wanted to advance a common sense policy agenda that will move our country in the right direction.
Clearly, they did not want my input. They only wanted the input of someone willing and able to fork over $1,250 for a couple glasses of wine, a chicken dinner, and the ability to influence a legislator in a private setting.
It looks like JTM just noticed as he says in his first sentence above that the party is focused on fundraising – DUH! A key raison d’etre for institutional parties to raise gobs of cash, at least until such time as we completely overhaul our campaign finance system, and yes JTM, the “money has to come from somewhere”:)
Trump spent about half of what Clinton did on his way to the presidency
Duh!
“Trump spent about half of what Clinton did on his way to the presidency”
And look what we got.
The reason we have a democracy is because we assert that it leads to better governance. Donald Trump demonstrates that tactics and strategy that lead to an EC win (he lost the popular vote) do not produce that result.
The evidence so far as that “populist” movements today lead to TERRIBLE election outcomes. Not just Donald Trump and the Tea Party before that — I’m talking about Brexit, putting Nazis back in the Bundestag and pulling Austria hard towards the extreme right.
Worldwide, the populist movement is leading to TERRIBLE governance.
We need to do much better than emulate Donald Trump.
Please don’t be obtuse. Trump got away with spending as little as he did because the media provided all that free coverage. They took his rallies live because he was virtually guaranteed to say something “interesting”. They didn’t do that for Hillary, Bernie, or the other Republicans. Plus, he could afford to self-fund and thus rely less on outside contributions anyway.
Trump had a message that spoke to working class Americans and a value statement that attacked the status quo in Washington D.C. As they are discovering, working class Americans are getting screwed by his administration and the swamp is getting filled, not drained…..but the damage it done and they’ve been screwed now by ordinary Democrats, ordinary Republicans AND Republicans claiming to be populists.
Our message was that we needed a “woman” in the White House and that someone with decades of experience in D.C. would continue business as usual.
That message, despite spending twice as much as Trump, failed. It will fail again if we spend four times as much.
Let me see if I understand your posture.
Donald Trump, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, spends a lifetime screwing working people at every opportunity. He stiffed contractors and staff. He declared bankruptcy multiple times. His MANY frauds, lies, and deceit were obvious during his entire campaign.
You’re saying that these “working class Americans” are JUST NOW discovering, after voting for this fraud, that they’re “getting screwed by his administration”? REALLY? And yet you get pissed off and defensive when I characterize these voters as “ignorant”?
How on earth can you have been BREATHING in America in 2016 and not know who Donald Trump was? Is there anything REMOTELY surprising about Donald Trump the president, in comparison to Donald Trump the candidate (or Donald Trump the wrestling promoter or Donald Trump the groper or Donald Trump the supplement fraudster or Donald Trump the for-profit-college fraudster)?
Our message was that we needed somebody competent. Our message was that we needed somebody rational. Our message was that we needed somebody who spent a lifetime working for all of us.
The “working class Americans” Americans who voted for Donald Trump were too racist, too sexist, too greedy, and too ignorant to pay attention to any of that.
The working class Americans who voted for Donald Trump did so BECAUSE of his racism, sexism, and xenophobia — not in spite of it. The working class Americans who voted for Donald Trump were so busy hating Hillary Clinton that they jumped from the frying pan into the fire.
Donald Trump has filled his administration with cronies from Goldman Sachs. So much for the notion that working-class Americans rejected Ms. Clinton because of speaking fees.
Working class Americans got EXACTLY what what they wanted and deserved. Choices matter. Votes have consequences. Brexit is destroying working-class people in the UK. Donald Trump is SCREWING working class people in America.
They asked for it, they demanded it, and now they GOT IT.
You caricature the Democratic message because your own obsession with Clinton-hatred continues to blind to you what actually happened and what is actually happening now. You deny the reality of what your “working class Americans” you love to talk about (which is really nothing more than angry white men) actually DID.
I really think your “message” will find much more receptive ears in your local GOP chapter. I see nothing but concern trolling in your relentlessly repeated lies and distortions about the Democratic Party.
Blaming the voters for being stupid is not the way to win any election….nor is selling out to Wall Street if one is a Democrat.
Donald Trump is more beholden to Wall Street then Hillary Clinton ever was. Donald Trump has filled his cabinet with Goldman Sachs alumni. Excusing ignorance because it supports your biases helps nobody except Donald Trump.
The effect of Donald Trump’s message has been to savage working-class Americans. You would have us emulate that message.
The working class voters who put Donald Trump in office made the WRONG choice, by any reasonable standard of right and wrong. That’s what actually happened, even though you refuse to admit it.
Though I’m not sure Trump is beholden to Wall Street so much as personifies it.
Nonetheless,I will take this as a victory as Tom from Somerville just admitted that Hillary Clinton was beholden to Wall Street to fill her cabinet, but not as much as Trump. Okay, she was sightly less corrupted by the money of the ownership class. I’ll agree with Tom on that one.
Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, would not be beholden to Wall Street at all, and that’s why I and other working class Democrats voted for him.
Sorry, JTM. That’s not what I wrote AT ALL, and I think you know it.
More trolling.
Why do your spats with Tom always sound so personal? This is a place to have a discussion and yes, sometimes passionate debate, but where you should enjoy your “victories” over another BMGer quite so much.
major proofread error above: NOT where you should enjoy…
Agree 100% with this. It’s tiresome and seriously, nobody but nobody else gives a damn.
I’m going to start deleting comments that have a personal tone — regardless of whether they have some arguable or interesting content to go with. They’ll just be gone, and I won’t provide an explanation. It’s gone on too long and it crowds out pertinent and fun conversation.
More badinage and raillery, please. Less nastiness and personal beefs.