Hillary and the Hijacking of the Democrat Party

[knapplc]

The biggest thing to understand before you read any of this is, political parties are not the government. Democrats (like Republicans) are a private club, a club whose purpose is to put candidates into office in American politics.  They are not much different than any other private club. If the Elks or the Shriners decided to proffer a candidate for a political office they could (with the requisite filings and legal claptrap that goes along with it). 

 

So here you have a private club with poor leadership. The Democrat National Convention, the DNC, is nominally run by the president when their party is in the White House.  Obama appears to have been a poor leader - certainly a poor financial leader - for the DNC.  His poor leadership allowed the party to go into debt, and allowed people like Debbie Wasserman Schultz the ability to break down the checks & balances inside the party and run it into the ground.  That allowed Hillary to come along and essentially hijack the national party.

 

Bernie supporters will tell you that Bernie was robbed of the nomination.  That would be true if it was ever anything other than the DNC's right to give it.  Remember - as a private organization, the DNC is under no obligation to give the nomination to the person the general public votes for in the primaries - especially if there isn't a consensus in the first round of balloting. On top of that, Democrats have Super Delegates, unbound delegates who have no obligation to listen to Democrat voters. When Hillary essentially took over the DNC in 2015, she basically sewed up those Super Delegates then and there.

 

That's all a long-winded way of saying the Democrats are a rudderless ship. They were hijacked by Hillary months, maybe year(s) before she took the nomination, who was allowed to do so thanks to the inept leadership of Obama and Schultz (among others, likely).  Read this excerpt.  It goes along with what many people were saying the instant Hillary began murmuring about running for president years and years ago - this was always going to be her nomination.  Always.

 

Quote

 

Inside Hillary Clinton’s Secret Takeover of the DNC

 

I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested. I’d had my suspicions from the moment I walked in the door of the DNC a month or so earlier, based on the leaked emails. But who knew if some of them might have been forged? I needed to have solid proof, and so did Bernie.

 

 

So I followed the money. My predecessor, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, had not been the most active chair in fundraising at a time when President Barack Obama’s neglect had left the party in significant debt. As Hillary’s campaign gained momentum, she resolved the party’s debt and put it on a starvation diet. It had become dependent on her campaign for survival, for which she expected to wield control of its operations.

 

 

 

 

[NM11046]

I guess I don't see how airing this does the DNC any good.  Identify the problem, put actions into place to fix it.  Throwing Obama, Hillary, Scwartz etc under the bus now only serves to alienate some while firing up others in a way that we say is unacceptable on the GOP side.  We will get nowhere without unity in our approach.  Not everything was done right, there's plenty that needs to change ... pointing out that later without concentrating and doing interviews about the former are the only tasteful way they will move ahead successfully.

[BigRedBuster]

Good post.

 

I personally think this was all started over 8 years ago, before the 2008 election that Obama won.  The only thing that stopped her then was a charismatic black man from Chicago lit a fire in the base that she and the DNC needed to back away from and allow to win.  

However, ever since then (even during the election) they had her pegged to take over when Obama was done.  One of the biggest holes in her resume was foreign affairs....well.....let's then put her as Secretary of State.  DONE!!!!

 

Years ago this was set in motion and there was no way in hell they were going to allow an old white guy to beat her for the nomination.

[BigRedBuster]

5 minutes ago, NM11046 said:

 Throwing Obama, Hillary, Scwartz etc under the bus now only serves to alienate some while firing up others in a way that we say is unacceptable on the GOP side.  We will get nowhere without unity in our approach.

 

Whose this "we" you are talking about?

Edited November 2, 2017 by BigRedBuster

[Danny Bateman]

 

Clinton spent years and years working within Dem circles. So it's not surprising to me that she had this level of influence and was able to broker a deal that shady. But as you said, the parties themselves are merely private clubs that make and exist by the own rules. The SEC is essentially toothless, and campaign finance enforcement has been terribly lax for far too long. There's not really much anybody can do about it, even if we think a deal like the one she struck with the DNC is untoward.

 

It wound up not affecting Bernie as much as it would have a more traditional candidate that was more reliant on the party for finances.

 

Nonetheless, it's for the best for the long-term health of the party that the Dems got beat the way they did in 2016. They needed to go into the wilderness & do some soul-searching. The top-down tendencies had steadily gotten worse under Obama to the point where you see what you saw with Clinton essentially mugging the state party for funds to try to get a D in the executive branch. State level organizing was/is suffering, and at a time when Republicans are maximizing their advantage through gerrymandering and lots of dark money buying lower-level seats, that's absolutely unacceptable if they want to wield any level of discernible influence outside of blue states.

 

Start over, Democrats. You can do better than you've been doing. You have to.

[Danny Bateman]

1 minute ago, BigRedBuster said:

 

Whose this "we" you are talking about?

 

NM is a Democrat. 

[BigRedBuster]

Just now, dudeguyy said:

 

NM is a Democrat. 

As long as the use of the word "we" is not meant to include everyone on the board or thread.

[Danny Bateman]

4 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

As long as the use of the word "we" is not meant to include everyone on the board or thread.

 

Nope, at least I didn't interpret that way.

 

Regardless, the thrust of my point above (and the point of Knapp's article, as I took it), the purging of the Clintons and the people that supported them from the Democratic party infrastructure would be more likely to make you (or Knapp, I assume) consider voting for a Democrat in the future, would it not?

If so, the loss in 2016 and the subsequent steps by the party are beneficial long term.

Edited November 2, 2017 by dudeguyy

[BigRedBuster]

4 minutes ago, dudeguyy said:

the purging of the Clintons and the people that supported them from the Democratic party infrastructure would be more likely to make you (or Knapp, I assume) consider voting for a Democrat in the future, would it not?

 

That would be a good start.  Although....if I were given the decision to vote for Hillary, Bill, Obama, Bernie or Trump.....I probably would vote for Bill.

Edited November 2, 2017 by BigRedBuster

[BigRedBuster]

OK....while doing a little searching and reading on this subject, I found this article from the Daily Beast.

 

Donna Brazile: I Found ‘Proof’ That Hillary Rigged the Race Against Bernie

 

Wait.....wasn't she the one that gave the debate questions to Hillary?  She is one of the most slimy figures that came out of the election.....and the DNC is relying on her to help fix the problem?

They have bigger issues than Hillary.

Edited November 2, 2017 by BigRedBuster

[knapplc]

13 minutes ago, dudeguyy said:

Regardless, the thrust of my point above (and the point of Knapp's article, as I took it), the purging of the Clintons and the people that supported them from the Democratic party infrastructure would be more likely to make you (or Knapp, I assume) consider voting for a Democrat in the future, would it not?

 

Yes, except I voted for Hillary in 2016. She was the lesser of two evils, but still an unworthy candidate.  I would prefer never to hear the name Clinton again.

[Danny Bateman]

16 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

 

That would be a good start.  Although....if I were given the decision to vote for Hillary, Bill, Obama, Bernie or Trump.....I probably would vote for Bill.

 

He probably just aligns best with your views, eh? It will be interesting if, on the policy front, they wind up going back to the middle with a Biden-type or tack leftward with someone like Warren in the next election.

 

I could see the latter as not being as appealing to more moderate folks. But I think that since there is no favorite, per se, right now (Bernie?), if they just run an organic primary that puts forth a fresh face, that in and of itself won't turn people off as much as running Clinton in 2016 did.

[NM11046]

35 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

 

Whose this "we" you are talking about?

I/me.  Maybe some others here ... but really, those who identify as Dem.

[knapplc]

22 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

That would be a good start.  Although....if I were given the decision to vote for Hillary, Bill, Obama, Bernie or Trump.....I probably would vote for Bill.

 

 

[NM11046]

32 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

As long as the use of the word "we" is not meant to include everyone on the board or thread.

Come on now ...