Liberal Values Defending Liberty and Enlightened Thought
Democratic Pundit Disputes Myth That Progressives Are Less Electable Than More Conservative Democrats
March 10, 2018 — Ron Chusid
Democrats suffered serious losses in Congressional and state races in 2010 and 2014 after running as a Republican-lite party. Despite trying to shift the blame to Russia and others, Democrats lost the 2016 election to a candidate as terrible as Donald Trump by nominating a corrupt conservative warmonger who has spent her career undermining liberal values. Finally we are seeing people question the conventional wisdom that nominating more conservative candidates will increase the chances for Democrats to win. I looked at this issue yesterday, and found that Bud Budowsky, a Democratic columnist at The Hill, has written a column on the same topic.
Budowsky wrote that A Sanders-Warren ticket could win big in 2020. Besides this ticket, Budowsky discussed two other hypothetical Democratic tickets, Joe Biden-Amy Klobuchar and Joe Kennedy III with either California Attorney General Xavier Becerra or Senator Kamala Harris. He wrote the following in favor of a more progressive ticket:
Behind the scenes of the national Democratic Party, it is commonly accepted wisdom, though not proven by facts, that the most progressive candidates are not the most electable candidates. In some states and districts this might be true.
But, in terms of winning the national popular vote and an electoral vote majority, there is a credible case that the most clearly progressive and politically aggressive Democrats can indeed win, and potentially win big.
The most important and powerfully persuasive data in modern American politics is that virtually every poll in 2016 showed Sanders defeating Donald Trump by 10 percent or more. In the Real Clear Politics summary of 2016 polling, Sanders ran ahead of Trump by an average margin of more than 10 percent and often by much larger margins.
Whether one supports Sanders or any other potential candidate in 2020, the case is clear that a strong progressive program and message would give Democrats a decided advantage in any campaign against the scandal-ridden and crony-capitalist-dominated presidency of Trump and his GOP allies in Congress…
While I could support Sanders, Warren or any of the progressive Democratic change candidates who could run on the ticket in 2020, it is important to disabuse the false notion, which is contrary to the facts demonstrated by national polling throughout 2016 and beyond, that progressive candidates are less electable.
Americans want a clear message of progressive change and would enthusiastically support a Sanders-Warren ticket, or any other ticket running on a similar program in 2020.
I agree with nominating candidates who have a clear message and stand for change. My one nitpick is that I would not limit this to progressive economic ideas. While Bernie Sanders did concentrate on this message in 2016, there were other factors which led many to support him over Hillary Clinton. It was partially over character, but there were other issues too. One study argues that Clinton lost because of being a warmonger. While I question if this was the main factor, foreign policy is important. Democrats attracted new voters when they opposed neoconservatives while George Bush was in office. They lost votes when they nominated a neocon interventionist such as Hillary Clinton, whose policies have caused considerable death and suffering around the world.
Sanders’ views on social and cultural issues were also far more attractive to voters than than Clinton’s socially conservative views. Many voters, especially young voters, are more socially libertarian. Democrats might be preferable to Republicans on reproductive rights, but fail to consistently support policies to reduce the role of government in the private lives of individuals. In addition to Clinton’s support for military interventionism, and the toleration of this by establishment Democrats, there is their support for the drug war. Clinton did not change her views on same-sex marriage until it became politically inexpedient to continue to oppose it. While it is still a government program, support for single payer healthcare, which Clinton campaigned against and the DCCC continues to oppose, is far more acceptable than government mandates pushed by Clinton to purchase private insurance plans with outrageous deductibles.
It is a good sign that more Democrats are paying attention to Bernie Sanders’ criticism of corporate Democrats, along with his support for Medicare-for-All. If Democrats are to rebuild a winning majority, they should more consistently challenge establishment views in other areas too.
John Kerry Criticizes Trump On Israel/Palestine And Raises Possibility Of Running For President In 2020
January 24, 2018 — Ron Chusid
The Jerusalem Post has quoted comments from John Kerry in a conversation with “a close associate of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Hussein Agha, for a long and open conversation about a variety of topics.” (Photo with the article is of Kerry meeting with Abbas while he was Secretary of State in 2016). This included criticism of Donald Trump, and during the conversation Kerry said he was considering running for president again:
During the conversation, according to the report, Kerry asked Agha to convey a message to Abbas and ask him to “hold on and be strong.” Tell him, he told Agha, “that he should stay strong in his spirit and play for time, that he will not break and will not yield to President Trump’s demands.” According to Kerry, Trump will not remain in office for a long time. It was reported that within a year there was a good chance that Trump would not be in the White House.
Kerry offered his help to the Palestinians in an effort to advance the peace process and recommended that Abbas present his own peace plan. “Maybe it is time for the Palestinians to define their peace principles and present a positive plan,” Kerry suggested. He promised to use all his contacts and all his abilities to get support for such a plan. He asked Abbas, through Agha, not to attack the US or the Trump administration, but to concentrate on personal attacks on Trump himself, whom Kerry says is solely and directly responsible for the situation.
According to the report, referring to the president, Kerry used derogatory terms and even worse. Kerry offered to help create an alternative peace initiative and promised to help garner international support, among others, of Europeans, Arab states and the international community. Kerry hinted that many in the American establishment, as well as in American intelligence, are dissatisfied with Trump’s performance and the way he leads America. He surprised his interlocutor by saying he was seriously considering running for president in 2020. When asked about his advanced age, he said he was not much older than Trump and would not have an age problem.
In a report on the conversation, Agha said that Kerry appears to be “crazy about things,” very energetic, and someone who is yearning to help realize the dream of peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Kerry explained, according to the report, that even in the Republican Party they do not know what to do with Trump and are very dissatisfied with him and that patience and breathing time are needed to get through this difficult period.
Considering the ages of other possible candidates including Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, Kerry’s age might not be a problem.
Sanders Seen As Front Runner For 2020 Democratic Nomination
December 22, 2017 — Ron Chusid
Bernie Sanders is repeatedly topping lists of potential 2020 Democratic candidates for president. The latest is a list at The Fix of The top 15 Democratic presidential candidates for 2020, ranked:
1. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (Previous: 1)
A must-read story from Politico’s Gabriel Debenedetti recently showed how Sanders conspicuously seems to be addressing the shortcomings that hampered his candidacy in 2016 — most notably his lack of familiarity with foreign policy and of inroads with powerful pro-Democratic groups, such as the American Federation of Teachers. Sanders has done nothing to diminish speculation that he will run again; the biggest question is, and will be, his age (76) — as it is with Brown (79) and Biden (75).
Complaining of a lack of familiarity with foreign policy is a bit of a stretch considering how Bernie Sanders has a far better track record than Hillary Clinton did when it came down to the decisions they made. I am hoping that greater study of foreign policy might lead Sanders to giving more priority to reducing foreign interventionism in a future campaign.
Joe Biden follows at 2nd, Elizabeth Warren is 3rd, Kirsten Gillibrand is 4th, and Kamala Harris is listed as 5th.
Brent Budowsky, writing at The Hill, wrote yesterday that Sanders would be the instant frontrunner if he runs:
If Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) decides to run for president in 2020, he would be the instant frontrunner for the nomination and favored in the general election against Trump or any other GOP nominee. If Sanders decides not to run, there is a strong likelihood that the ultimate nominee will campaign, win and govern as a true progressive in the Sanders mold.
When historians look back on the Sanders campaign in 2016, they will note two fundamentally important and lasting contributions that Sanders and his supporters made.
First, the Sanders platform in the 2016 primaries, which was significantly but not fully included in the Democratic platform at the convention, will provide the policy blueprint for the next Democratic presidential campaign and the next great Democratic president.
The progressive populist policies of William Jennings Bryan evolved into the progressive populist presidency of Teddy Roosevelt. The populist policies of Teddy Roosevelt, when he campaigned to regain the presidency as the progressive candidate after abandoning the Republican Party, were largely incorporated by Franklin Roosevelt into his New Deal.
Similarly, the programs championed by Sanders in 2016 will largely be adopted in the Democratic platform in 2020 and fervently championed by the 2020 nominee, whether it is Sanders or a similar candidate.
The second historic legacy of the Sanders campaign in 2016 was that he challenged, and defeated, the old style campaign fundraising paradigm of previous major candidates. It was revolutionary and historic that Sanders energized a gigantic army of small donors and became a fundraising leader who changed campaign fundraising forever.
The Sanders small-donor paradigm thrives today in the pro-Sanders group, Our Revolution, and in the enormous impact small donors have had since 2016, most recently in the Alabama Senate election.
Repeated polls showing that Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in the country (while the favorable ratings of Clinton and Trump continue to decline) is another point in his favor.
While early predictions for presidential nominations are often wrong, it is encouraging that Sanders has been named by so many sources as the likely front runner for several months. For example, as I posted in July, Vox, A Voice Of The Democratic Establishment, Now Realizes That Bernie Sanders Is The Democrats’ Real 2020 Frontrunner.
We certainly cannot count on the Democrats making the wisest decision, considering that they essentially rigged the nomination for Clinton in 2016 despite all the evidence that Clinton would have difficulty winning and lagged about ten points behind Sanders in head to head match-ups against Republicans. There are also many in the Democratic establishment who are more concerned about maintaining their positions than what is best for the party, and for the country.
Democratic Insiders See Bernie Sanders As Top Contender For 2020 Nomination
November 25, 2017 — Ron Chusid
It is rather ridiculous to try to predict the 2020 nominee this far in advance, but encouraging to see the rankings from The Hill. In an article entitled How Dem insiders rank the 2020 contenders, Bernie Sanders is listed first:
1. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)
Advisers to the senator are telegraphing that Sanders is eyeing a 2020 run — and his network is already ready to go, with supporters convinced that he was the candidate who would have beaten President Trump in 2016.
“His people have never gone away,” said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon. “And he has a loyal core following out there that will be with him come hell or high water.”
Also working in Sanders’s favor, Bannon said, is the leftward shift of the Democratic Party.
“The Sanders wing is becoming the dominant wing of the party,” he said.
Still, strategists note that Sanders would be 79 in 2020, which could work against him at a time when Democrats are hungry for change.
Following Sanders are: Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Sherrod Brown, and Deval Patrick. As is typical in such horse race coverage from the media, there is virtually nothing said about the comparative views or records of the candidates.
It is hopeful that the Sanders wing is referred to the dominant wing of the party. This is also not an isolated view. For example, last July I had a post noting that Vox, A Voice Of The Democratic Establishment, Now Realizes That Bernie Sanders Is The Democrats’ Real 2020 Frontrunner. Of course all available evidence does suggest that Sanders would have won in the general election. He did ten points better than Clinton in head to head polls against Trump, he had far more support among independents and even Republican voters than Clinton had, he was stronger in the rust belt than Clinton, he had no email scandal, and had nothing to fear from leaks of DNC email by Wikileaks. If Clinton supporters claim that Clinton lost due to Comey’s letter or Wikileaks, they should admit that the candidate who would not have been affected by either would have had a better chance to win.
Of course Clinton supporters are not that rational–and some are still not giving up. One of the more ridiculous articles posted recently is from Salon entitled Here’s your leftover turkey: The case for Hillary Clinton 2020. Needless to say, the case is not very strong, unless you consider being a war monger who came close to Donald Trump, but still lost, to be points in her favor.
Biden Writes In Memoir That He Did Not Run For President Fearing Dirty Campaign From Clinton Supporters
November 9, 2017 — Ron Chusid
One year ago the Democrats lost an election to a candidate as awful as Donald Trump. They lost not because of Russia, and not because of James Comey. They lost because of giving the nomination to a candidate as awful as Hillary Clinton. In a normal year Joe Biden would have probably have been the establishment candidate and, while he would not personally be my first choice, he probably could have beaten Donald Trump easily. In his upcoming memoir, Promise Me Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship and Purpose, Joe Biden wrote that he did not run because of being threatened with a dirty campaign by Hillary Clinton supporters.
The Telegraph is one of the newspapers which quoted portions of Biden’s memoir:
Joe Biden knew he could beat Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination but decided not to run because he feared a “stop at nothing” smear campaign by her supporters, he reveals in a new memoir.
The man who served as Barack Obama’s vice-president remains a favourite among party faithful, many of whom believe he would have fared better in the states that delivered the White House to Donald Trump.
His words are certain to deepen splits among Democrats following their defeat and reignite speculation the 74-year-old is preparing for one last run.
In Promise Me Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship and Purpose, due to be published next week, Mr Biden discusses his decision not to stand in the wake of his son Beau’s death.
He describes meeting Mrs Clinton in February 2015 when she was preparing her campaign and probing his plans.
“But if I ran, I told her, I would not run a negative campaign. She said the same,” he writes, in excerpts published by Mail Online, but then she added: “Although some of our supporters can get out of hand sometimes, it would not be me.”
After his son’s death, the Biden family had to deal with more upheaval when his other son, Hunter, left his wife for Beau’s widow.
That summer he received messages urging him to stand but had an ominous feeling that “the opposition research had already started on me”.
He does not say who the opposition was, but describes how negative stories began appearing in the media about past political positions.
“And Clinton backers sent the signal that they would not stop at voting records and policies if I did get in the race,” he writes.
Biden is being overly kind to Clinton in blaming her supporters and not Clinton herself. It has been typical of Clinton to claim innocence of some of the dirtiest acts of her supporters, such as launching the Birther campaign against Barack Obama during the 2008 nomination battle. I think that Biden is smart enough to see through this. Regardless, we certainly know how dirty and dishonest many of Clinton’s supporters are and can understand Biden’s concerns.
Donna Brazile Considered Removing Clinton From Ticket And Replacing Her With Joe Biden
November 4, 2017 — Ron Chusid
It was inexcusable for a major political party to give the nomination to someone as unfit for high office as Hillary Clinton. There were times in which news reports indicated that party leaders had reservations about her being the candidate, but they came down to only concern for whether she could win, not her suitability for the position. The second major revelation from Donna Brazile’s upcoming book is that she had actually contemplated removing Clinton from the ticket, although not for the right reason. From The Washington Post:
Former Democratic National Committee head Donna Brazile writes in a new book that she seriously contemplated replacing Hillary Clinton as the party’s 2016 presidential nominee with then-Vice President Biden in the aftermath of Clinton’s fainting spell, in part because Clinton’s campaign was “anemic” and had taken on “the odor of failure.”
In an explosive new memoir, Brazile details widespread dysfunction and dissension throughout the Democratic Party, including secret deliberations over using her powers as interim DNC chair to initiate the process of removing Clinton and running mate Sen. Tim Kaine (Va.) from the ticket after Clinton’s Sept. 11, 2016, collapse in New York City.
Brazile writes that she considered a dozen combinations to replace the nominees and settled on Biden and Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), the duo she felt most certain would win over enough working-class voters to defeat Republican Donald Trump. But then, she writes, “I thought of Hillary, and all the women in the country who were so proud of and excited about her. I could not do this to them.”
Brazile paints a scathing portrait of Clinton as a well-intentioned, historic candidate whose campaign was badly mismanaged, took minority constituencies for granted and made blunders with “stiff” and “stupid” messages. The campaign was so lacking in passion for the candidate, she writes, that its New York headquarters felt like a sterile hospital ward where “someone had died.”
There were many reasons to consider taking Clinton off the ticket, but her isolated fainting spell was among the more trivial. On the other hand, Brazile’s assessment of her campaign as being badly mismanaged is consistent with other reports.
Brazile’s intended replacement ticket of Biden and Booker would have been a much stronger ticket than Clinton/Kaine and probably could have beaten Donald Trump if they had won the nomination through the primary system. It is hard to say what would have happened if the replacement was made at the last minute. Sanders supporters would have questioned why the runner up in the nomination battle was not made the replacement, especially in light of how the party rigged the nomination for Clinton. They would probably have had even more difficulty keeping the votes of Clinton voters considering how twenty-five percent of Clinton supporters voted for McCain/Palin after Clinton lost the 2008 nomination to Barack Obama.
While there was plenty of previous evidence of the party violating its bylaws and rigging the nomination for Clinton, Donna Brazile’s confession of this in another excerpt from her book has again raised the issue. As expected, Clinton supporters have been trying to twist the facts again. They ignore the fact that there was already significant evidence that the party was violating its rules for remaining neutral. They claim that the agreement only affected the general election despite it beginning in 2015 and going through the primary season including multiple matters affecting the primary battle. They claim that Bernie Sanders had a similar agreement when the fund raising agreement offered Sanders was substantially different. They ignore how Clinton used this to starve down ticket candidates of money in a scheme which appears like money laundering and evasion of campaign finance laws.
The bottom line in 2016 was that Clinton was a terrible candidate who could not win a national election fairly. Hillary Clinton could not beat an unknown like Barack Obama in 2008. She could not beat someone as atrocious as Donald Trump in 2016. She could not beat an unlikely challenger like Bernie Sanders in 2016 without massive intervention by the party to rig the nomination for her. The consequence of the DNC rigging the nomination for a candidate who could not win the nomination on her own was having a weak candidate who could not even beat Donald Trump.
Update: Glenn Greenwald has subsequently posted, also debunking some of the false claims from Clinton supporters I mentioned above, along with some bogus attacks being made regarding Donna Brazile and the DNC email.
Reading “What Happened” So You Do Not Have To
September 16, 2017 — Ron Chusid
Reading Hillary Clinton’s memoir, What Happened, is like reading a memoir from Jesse James which makes no admission that he ever robbed a bank. She talked about trivial matters from her life, repeated her excuses blaming everyone else for her loss, and gave virtually no recognition of her dishonest actions and lifelong opposition to liberal values behind the opposition to her. What Happened was previously used as a book title by former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan. Maybe she reused this title because Jeff Flake beat her to reusing the philosophically more honest choice, Conscience of a Conservative. Of course that would assume that she has a conscience, but she showed no signs of having one.
It is hard to see the point in this book beyond finger pointing. Clinton wrote:
At first, I had intended to keep relatively quiet. Former Presidents and former nominees often try to keep a respectful distance from the front lines of politics, at least for a while. I always admired how both George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush avoided criticizing Bill and Barack, and how Bill ended up working with George H. W. on tsunami relief in Asia and Katrina recovery on the Gulf Coast. And with George W. in Haiti after the earthquake in 2011. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
She should have ended the book right there.
In a rare moment of honesty, Clinton showed how clueless she is in writing, “in terms of fighting the previous war, I think it’s fair to say that I didn’t realize how quickly the ground was shifting under all our feet.” The only shifting Clinton has shown with the times has been to move on from blaming everything on the vast right wing conspiracy to blaming the vast left wing conspiracy against her.
She might briefly admit to a mistake, but it is quickly followed with a major but as she places the blame on Russia, James Comey, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, or others. If she did mention something she did wrong, it was passed over as a minor tactical error, ignoring the magnitude of her ethical lapses.
This week Bernie Sanders has been pushing for comprehensive, affordable health care for all Americans. Hillary Clinton is pushing a book which attacks the left and questions the validity of our electoral process (which she previously attacked Trump for threatening to do). She has opposed Medicare for All based upon false claims, continuing her long history of working to undermine liberal ideas.
While she launched numerous bogus attacks against others, she feels that her mistakes are too trivial to be considered. She wrote, “The truth is, everyone’s flawed. That’s the nature of human beings. But our mistakes alone shouldn’t define us. We should be judged by the totality of our work and life.” Judging Clinton by the totality of her work and life, we must include her repeated push for neoconservative wars and regime change, her repeated advocacy of violating our First Amendment rights, her social conservatism, her support for the corrupting influence of money in politics, and her use of her position for personal financial gain–including violating the ethics agreement she entered into before being confirmed as Secretary of State.
Hillary Clinton wrote about her concern for children. In the real world, Hillary Clinton has shown her concern for children in other countries by dropping bombs on them and defending the use of cluster bombs in civilian areas. There are also those who suffered from Bill’s welfare reform at home. However, “It was a hard call. Bill and I lay awake at night talking it over.”
Clinton shows no understanding of liberal or progressive values. While she mischaracterized Bernie Sanders’ platform as offering everyone a pony, it is actually Clinton who sees liberalism as little more than government giving out ponies, even if smaller ones than she believes Bernie Sanders would. She has no understanding of how true liberal and progressives would change the status quo, no concept of the human rights we defend, and no concept of what is wrong with her interventionist views.
Her ignorance of liberal concepts of human rights would explain how she totally misunderstood the warnings of George Orwell. To an authoritarian such as Hillary Clinton the lesson of 1984 is that we should not question our political leaders, the press, or experts:
Attempting to define reality is a core feature of authoritarianism. This is what the Soviets did when they erased political dissidents from historical photos. This is what happens in George Orwell’s classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, when a torturer holds up four fingers and delivers electric shocks until his prisoner sees five fingers as ordered. The goal is to make you question logic and reason and to sow mistrust toward exactly the people we need to rely on: our leaders, the press, experts who seek to guide public policy based on evidence, ourselves.
On the other hand, Clinton is quite skilled in using Orwellian techniques to attack her political enemies. She uses the same types of distortions against Bernie Sanders as she did during the campaign, and as she used against Barack Obama in 2008. I have already responded to some of the attacks against Sanders here, and also recommend this rebuttal of Clinton’s arguments by Les Leopold. While reading What Happened I came across another fallacious attack on Sanders. Clinton wrote, “After the election, Bernie suggested that Democrats should be open to nominating and supporting candidates who are anti-choice.”
No, that is not what happened at all. On the other hand, the Democratic establishment has shown how they are willing to ignore reproductive rights. Clinton herself has also been to the right of Sanders on the issue, including her support for parental notification laws and expressing a willingness to compromise with Republicans. This is not surprising in light of her personal social conservatism on the issue and her mantra of keeping abortion”safe, legal, and rare,” stigmatizing women who have had an abortion.
Her attempts to falsely portray Sanders as being to the right of her on abortion are similar to her claims of being to the left of Sanders on gun control, despite having run in 2008 as a “pro-gun churchgoer.” Of course while attacking Sanders and blaming him for her loss she overlooked the degree to which Sanders campaigned for her after the primaries were over. Her antipathy towards a fair democratic process includes a visceral objection to being challenged for political office.
Clinton was no more honest in discussing the scandals which rightfully harmed her campaign. For example, she misquoted from the State Department Inspector General report to falsely make it look like the report supported her actions in the email scandal. In reality, the Inspector General report said exactly the opposite in showing how she violated policy. As we saw during the campaign, she keeps repeating the same lies about the scandal, including the statements from James Comey, regardless of how often the media fact checkers show that she is outright lying.
She attempted to open up personally, but even then wasn’t entirely honest. Among the more unbelievable lines, Clinton wrote, “For me, fund-raisers were a little more complicated than other campaign events. Even after all these years, it’s hard for me to ask for other people’s money.”
Among the other personal discussions in the book, Clinton wrote, “Bill and I bought our home in 1999 because we loved the bedroom.” Now try to get that image out of your mind.
Actually what she wrote after this was quite tame, including a description of the vaulted ceiling, windows, and photos. And then, “After waking up, I check my email and read my morning devotional from Reverend Bill Shillady, which is usually waiting in my inbox. I spend a few minutes in contemplation, organizing my thoughts and setting my priorities for the day.” The rest of us will not be able to see the writings of Bill Shillady as his publisher has pulled his planned book, entitled Strong for a Moment Like This: The Daily Devotions of Hillary Rodham Clinton, due to plagiarism.
Of course, as was inevitable, I am seeing defenses of What Happened claiming that disagreements with Clinton’s book are based upon misogyny. What an intellectually and morally bankrupt viewpoint. Do such Clinton supporters have even a shred of integrity? I am just relieved that Hillary Clinton is not in the White House, leaving us to contend with claims that our objections to whatever war she wanted to start, or whatever violation of the First Amendment she was advocating, was based only on sexism.
Clinton Says She Is Done Being A Candidate–But Will Remain In Politics
September 10, 2017 — Ron Chusid
Hillary Clinton says she will not be a candidate, but says she will remain in politics. She is already involved in influencing the Democratic Party, trying to keep it conservative in an age in which it is necessary to move left and differentiate from the Republicans to win. Even her promise of not being a candidate has to be taken with a grain of salt considering how frequently Clinton has lied in the past–probably coming second to only Donald Trump as the most dishonest politician ever.
The Washington Post reports:
Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said Sunday that she will not pursue the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
“I am done with being a candidate,” Clinton said on CBS’s “Sunday Morning.”
Clinton — who on Tuesday will release “What Happened,” her memoir of the 2016 campaign — does plan to stay involved in national politics, just not as an “active politician” who may launch a campaign.
“But I am not done with politics because I literally believe that our country’s future is at stake,” she said in an interview with Jane Pauley.
While we cannot count on Clinton to keep her word not to run, now that she has attacked Obama, Biden, and the DNC in addition to Sanders, it is doubtful that the Democrats would still want her as a candidate. I would also hope they learned their lesson after Clinton lost an election against Donald Trump which probably could have been won by nominating a random name pulled out of the phone book as opposed to Clinton.
Democrats Dreading Damage From Clinton Book Tour
September 7, 2017 — Ron Chusid
Hillary Clinton has become the Democrats worst nightmare. She managed to run a campaign which was so poorly run that she could not even beat a candidate as terrible as Donald Trump. Now her actions, and the actions of her most fanatic supporters like Peter Daou, threaten further damage to the party. Politico writes, Democrats dread Hillary’s book tour: Reliving the 2016 nightmare is the last thing the party needs right now, many say.
Democratic operatives can’t stand the thought of her picking the scabs of 2016, again — the Bernie Sanders divide, the Jim Comey complaints, the casting blame on Barack Obama for not speaking out more on Russia. Alums of her Brooklyn headquarters who were miserable even when they thought she was winning tend to greet the topic with, “Oh, God,” “I can’t handle it,” and “the final torture.”
…“Maybe at the worst possible time, as we are fighting some of the most high-stakes policy and institutional battles we may ever see, at a time when we’re trying to bring the party together so we can all move the party forward — stronger, stronger together,” said Rep. Jared Huffman, a Democrat who represents a Northern California district. “She’s got every right to tell her story. Who am I to say she shouldn’t, or how she should tell it? But it is difficult for some of us, even like myself who’ve supported her, to play out all these media cycles about the blame game, and the excuses.”
In a tweet late Tuesday night, Huffman pleaded with Clinton to stop blaming Sanders for her loss, as she partly does in the book, according to excerpts that leaked ahead of its release. Huffman said the tweet had gotten a lot of “likes” from his colleagues — albeit in private conversations with him.
“There is a collective groan,” he said, “whenever there’s another news cycle about this.”
The Hill similarly reports, Clinton’s score-settling frustrates Democrats.
Clinton says that Sanders’s attacks did “lasting damage” to her general election hopes. She accuses him of “paving the way” for Trump to cast her as a corrupt corporate stooge deserving of the nickname “Crooked Hillary.”
Sanders brushed off Clinton’s criticism in a Wednesday interview with The Hill, saying it’s time for Democrats to “look forward, not backward.”
Not everyone was so charitable. Even some of Clinton’s allies have grown weary of her insistence on re-litigating the 2016 campaign at a time when the Democratic Party is looking to forge a new identity in the age of Trump.
“The best thing she could do is disappear,” said one former Clinton fundraiser and surrogate who played an active role at the convention. “She’s doing harm to all of us because of her own selfishness. Honestly, I wish she’d just shut the f— up and go away.”
…Those daunting challenges have some Democrats fuming at what they view as Clinton’s petty post-election score settling.
“None of this is good for the party,” said one former Obama aide. “It’s the Hillary Show, 100 percent. A lot of us are scratching our heads and wondering what she’s trying to do. It’s certainly not helpful.”
My response to her attacks on Bernie Sanders were posted here. Besides attacking Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton has attacked Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and the DNC in post-election statements and in her book, further burning bridges with Democrats.
Excerpts from Clinton’s book repeat the same type of bogus talking points we have heard, and dismissed, from Clinton supporters for months. It doesn’t help matters that the book is coming out at the same time that Peter Daou has started a Clinton propaganda site (Verrit.com) which has received a tremendous amount of mocking. (I have posted about it here and here). It is packed with talking points in the format of the graphic here, except I added my own message.
Politico Magazine was even harder on Verrit in an article entitled This Pro-Hillary Website Looks Like North Korean Agitprop: Peter Daou, the prickly pro-Clinton operative, has launched a propaganda rag so shameless it would make Kim Jong Un blush.
Who would buy stock in a twice-defeated presidential candidate?
If the candidate under question is Hillary Clinton, that zealous buyer would be Peter Daou, one-time rocker, seasoned political blogger, former campaign adviser to John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, ambitious litigant, propagandist and internet entrepreneur. A couple of days ago, Daou launched his self-funded Verrit.com, a slavishly pro-Clinton site (endorsed by Hillary!) to carry on her failed crusade.
The derision greeting Verrit is so universal it inspires sympathy for Daou, as Gizmodo, the Washington Post, Outline, New Republic, New York, The Ringer and others have broken its back with their snap judgments. “Verrit, a Media Company for Almost Nobody,” read one headline. “No One Asked for Verrit, But Here We Are,” stated another. “What Is Verrit and Why Should I Care? (Unclear; You Shouldn’t.),” said a third. “Peter Daou Continues to Embarrass Hillary Clinton,” asserted the best in show…
As Daou’s Verrit manifesto puts it, the site hopes to become the trusted source for the 65.8 million voters who cast their ballots last November for Clinton and who seek verified “facts” they can use to argue politics. In theory, everybody needs a cheat sheet. In practice, the Verrit method is cringe-worthy. The headline to one early Verrit borrows from the literary methods of Kim Jong Un’s North Korea to assert, “Hillary Democrats Are the Heart and Conscience of America.” Does anybody outside of the Daou re-education camp really think this way?
When it comes to criticism, Daou isn’t just a snowflake. He’s a snow squall, equating most criticism of Clinton (or criticism of Daou) with the desire to erase Clinton and Clintonites. Early this year, he telegraphed his irrational partisanship by tweeting that anybody tweeting “Bernie would have won” in his timeline would earn “an instant block” from his account. “Useless and baseless conjecture. Betrays someone unfocused on the challenge ahead,” Daou continued.
His is a reductionist world where evidence of misogyny and sexism can be deduced from almost any political discussion of Madame Secretary. When Verrit launched, it inspired not only a mudslide of negative reviews but an ugly denial-of-service attack on his servers. From this rocky reception, Daou didn’t extract the perennial lesson that politics ain’t beanbag. He didn’t cinch up and concede that political passions will cause folks to overheat. Instead, he flew to Twitter and raged in all caps, “PEOPLE ARE STILL TERRIFIED OF HILLARY. PEOPLE STILL WANT TO DESTROY HILLARY. PEOPLE WANT TO SILENCE ANYONE WHO SUPPORTS HER.”
Terrified? Destroy? Silence? I’d love to see the serial numbers on those “facts.”
As the New Republic’s Sarah Jones pointed out, Verrit’s early shilling for Clinton easily veers into propaganda when it posts headlines like “Sanders and the Mainstream Media Helped Put Trump in the White House.” Such headlines present Clinton as a victim, denying her any agency, and blaming all of her failures on the press and Bernie Sanders. To dwell on this Verrit for just one more beat, is it safe to say that somebody out there is still terrified of Bernie, that somebody out there still wants to destroy Bernie, and that somebody wants to silence anyone who supported him.
All of these attempts to cover up Clinton’s failures are not fooling the majority of Americans. As Politco also reports on the latest polls, Trump hits new low in public opinion — but he’s still beating Hillary Clinton.
Just 36 percent of those reached by pollsters said they have either very or somewhat positive feelings about Trump, 2 points lower than in the poll’s June iteration. But at 36 percent, Trump still finished 6 points higher than Clinton, his 2016 Democratic opponent, about whom just 30 percent of respondents said they feel either very or somewhat positive.
If Clinton had just stayed quiet after the election, she might have had a chance to avoid becoming even less liked than Donald Trump.
