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Bernie-Aligned Group: ‘Corruption That Plagues the Democratic Party is Bigger Than One Primary’

November 2, 2017

Bernie-Aligned Group: ‘Corruption That Plagues the Democratic Party is Bigger Than One Primary’, Washington Free Beacon,  , November 2, 2017

(Corruption? In the DNC? In Washington? How could that possibly happen? It’s shocking!

–DM

Sen. Bernie Sanders / Getty Images

A liberal group made up of former staffers of Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign has responded to the admission by former Democratic National Committee chairman Donna Brazile that the primary was rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton. They said the “corruption that plagues” the party goes far beyond the 2016 primary.

Brazile, who became the DNC’s interim chairman during last year’s primary, disclosed in Politico on Thursday morning that she was able to find “evidence of internal corruption” showing the DNC rigged the system “to throw the primary to Hillary” during her time as chairman. The evidence came in the form of an August 2015 agreement between the DNC and the Clinton campaign that gave Clinton control of the DNC’s finances, strategy, and staffing decisions a full six months before a single vote was cast.

Saikat Chakrabarti, who was director of organizing strategy for the Sanders campaign and now runs a group aiming to change the Democratic Party, said he wasn’t surprised to hear the admission from Brazile.

“We all knew that the primary was rigged,” Chakrabarti said on behalf of Justice Democrats, a group he founded. “But the corruption that plagues the Democratic Party is bigger than one primary—it’s become a rot set at the very root of a party [that] claims to be for working people.”

Chakrabarti added that the Democratic Party is currently “devoid of message, devoid of money, and devoid of a winning strategy.”

“The people want a party that works for the people and wins,” he said. “We are sick and tired of wasting money on helping a party that wastes it through incompetence and corrupt negligence.”

Justice Democrats says it has seen an uptick in donations—$2,500 an hour—since Brazile’s admission broke on Thursday morning. The group currently has a slate of candidates running for office in 2018, many of them challenging Democratic incumbents.

Categories: Bernie Sanders' supporters, Clinton corruption, Democrat National Committee, Donna Brazile
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Clinton Caught On Tape – Audio Reveals Thoughts On Sanders’ Supporters – Fox & Friends

October 2, 2016

Clinton Caught On Tape – Audio Reveals Thoughts On Sanders’ Supporters – Fox & Friends via YouTube, October 1, 2-16

Categories: Bernie Sanders' supporters, Hillary Clinton
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The Marketing of the Democratic Candidate

August 1, 2016

The Marketing of the Democratic Candidate, Front Page Magazine, Bruce Thornton, August 1, 2016

happy face

The Democrats’ convention ended after striving mightily to persuade most of America that Hillary Clinton is somehow more human, likable, caring, and accomplished than the public record of her scandals and behavior would suggest. Unfortunately for the Dems, not Bill, not Obama, not Hillary herself can transform Hillary. There is no political alchemy that can turn that base metal into gold.

For years, armies of political consultants, publicists, and marketing geniuses have not been able to make people like Hillary. We’re on at least the fifth version of Hillary, and all the oxymoronic advice like “act naturally” or “be likable” has not been effective. She’s still inauthentic and unlikable, and 56% of voters disapprove of her. She’s like New Coke or Betamax, a bad product no amount of advertising could sell in the real world of market accountability. Yet the mainstream media have labored like Trojans on this project, downplaying her crimes and failures, believing her lies, and rationalizing her faults.

We had a representative example recently in Scott Pelley’s interview with Hillary on 60 Minutes. After she whined and whined about the invidious “Hillary Standard” –– the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy version 2.0––Pelley gently asked in therapeutic Oprah tones, “Why do you put yourself through it?” In other words, he accepted the ridiculous premise that her negative image is the consequence not of her actions, but of “Unfounded, inaccurate, mean-spirited attacks with no basis in truth, reality,” as she put it. A real journalist would have challenged her by asking about the long catalogue of financial improprieties from the Whitewater scandal to the Clinton Foundation, or the self-serving lies from “landing under sniper fire” in Bosnia to telling the grieving parents of the four Americans murdered in Benghazi that an obscure Internet video was responsible. But skilled courtiers know that royalty can’t stand too much reality.

This year’s Democratic Convention speakers didn’t do much better, when they could be heard above the Berniacs’ booing and jeering. Their catalogue of lies about Hillary’s résumé––her alleged achievements on Middle East peace, “climate change,” getting Iran to negotiate over its nuclear weapons program––smacks of desperation, given how many light-years from the truth they are. The Middle East has descended into a Darwinian jungle in which ISIS, Russia, and Iran are the alpha predators. Even if Anthropogenic Global Warming is true, all the much touted international agreements from Kyoto to Paris have done and will do nothing to cool the planet. As for Iran, it takes remarkable shamelessness to tout this disaster, given the mounting evidence that the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism has been serially cheating and is likely to obtain nuclear armaments within a couple of decades.

Bill Clinton, the fading Big Dog of the party, gave a tedious convention speech that spent a lot of time trying to “humanize” Hillary by talking about their courtship and marriage and other random acts of compassion and caring. Apart from the preposterous premise that they have had a happy and loving marriage (see Crisis of Character), humanizing Hillary is a fruitless task. She obviously lacks her husband’s political brilliance and powers of empathy. Of course, his empathy is phony, but like Truman Capote’s Holly Golightly, Bill is a real phony. He believes all this crap he believes. Hillary has been in the public eye for 25 years, and in all that time she has consistently appeared mean, entitled, insincere, vindictive, petty, elitist, money-grubbing, and insatiable for power.

Then came the big gun, Barack Obama, who in between mentioning himself 119 times said the following with a straight face: “I can say with confidence there has never been a man or a woman––not me, not Bill, nobody––more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States of America.” And just what are those qualifications? In her eight years in the Senate, the only successful legislation she sponsored was renaming a courthouse for Thurgood Marshall. Eleven other bills were passed in the Senate, most of them small beer. Four of them proposed renaming post offices, one proposed to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Purple Heart, and another the 275th anniversary of the American Revolution. The rest weren’t much better, and none were passed by the House.

How about her tenure as Secretary of State? Let’s see, there’s the groveling “reset” with Russia, which for all its appeasement of Putin failed miserably. There’s the ill-conceived overthrow of Muamar Ghaddafi, which left Libya a playground for ISIS and other jihadist outfits, and swamped the region with weaponry looted from Ghaddafi’s arsenals. There’s the debacle of Benghazi, when repeated requests for security by the consular outpost were ignored, four Americans were left to die, and Hillary responded with blatant lies and political spin about the cause of the terror attack. Don’t forget the private server, through which classified material was passed and likely ended up being read by hackers. And the biggest failure was already mentioned, the deal with Iran that will spark nuclear proliferation in a region already riven with violence and disorder.

Obama was correct about one thing, though––she is more qualified than he was in 2008, an embarrassingly low bar. But more qualified than George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln? Only if you define “qualified” as possession of a résumé filled with the occupation of government offices she never used to accomplish anything meaningful.

Finally came the Grande Dame herself to tell us that only she can fix the problems that Obama says don’t exist in the sunny uplands of America, and that only she can be an agent of change who will govern exactly like Obama.

There were Mr. Rogers bromides about “we will fix it together” and “it takes a village.” Oprah bumper stickers like “love trumps hate.” Smug references to her years of “public service,” a euphemism for holding offices without really doing anything. Maudlin family history and anecdotes about sick children. A revisionist history of the Obama era that leaves out the inconvenient truths that his tenure has seen the worst recovery from a recession since World War II, and a retreat of America that has left a vacuum filled by our rivals, enemies, and terrorists.

Then came the chum for progressives. Evil corporations and income inequality. Attacks on the same Wall Street that has given her foundation and campaign millions and millions of dollars. “Comprehensive immigration reform,” the code word for amnesty and minting new Democrat voters. Job-killing minimum wage increases. The same “investment in new, good-paying jobs” that Obama spent nearly a trillion dollars on, only to discover that “shovel-ready jobs were not so shovel ready,” as the president laughed. Gun control, though it’s been repeatedly proven to have little impact on crime or terrorism. The threat that “Wall Street, corporations, and the super-rich are going to start paying their fair share of taxes,” even though the top 1% already pay 38% of income taxes, and those making at least $250,000 pay more than half. As for corporations, their tax rate is already one of the highest among advanced economies. And of course, “the precise and strategic application of power” in order to deal with ISIS––which in practice means continuing Obama’s habit of doing the least possible tactically in order to avoid the political blow-back from risky strategic action.

So after a three-day advertisement of her achievements, policy chops, qualifications, compassion, and experience, her speech was a catalogue of sentimental blather and stale progressive clichés, delivered to a crowd as easy to please as drunks at a comedy show.

In the end, after these mendacious speeches, all that’s left to justify a Hillary presidency is the specious argument that nominating a rich, white, Ivy-League-credentialed woman from an affluent family will correct a cosmic injustice akin to slavery, a “milestone in the fight for equity in postwar America,” as the Wall Street Journal wrote. Given the huge gains made by women over the last several decades, it was inevitable that a woman would be nominated for president. But as theJournal continued, women’s “progress has become so widespread that some women voters appear indifferent to another glass ceiling shattered. More women graduate from college than men. They are the main breadwinners in four of 10 U.S. households. They run General Motors, Co., PepsiCo Inc. and IBM Corp.”  Nearly half the enrollees in law and medical schools are women, and they are projected to surpass males in a decade. Women are Senators, members of the House, and Cabinet members in historically unprecedented numbers.

Moreover, it would be a more believable ground-breaking achievement if it were a woman whose climb to prominence hadn’t depended on marrying the right man and then publicly sacrificing her feminist dignity when he serially humiliated her with his sordid philandering, a scenario straight out of Mad Men. Perhaps that’s why Donald Trump gets more support than Hillary among white women between the ages of 35 and 64. “I think we have gotten away from the historic nature of this campaign because Hillary Clinton has become an exceptionally polarizing candidate,” admitted Democratic pollster Peter Hart.

Nor can Clinton count on progressive millennials who flocked to Bernie to get excited about her supposed historic achievement. Writing for The Weekly Standard, Alice B. Lloyd surveys an anti-Clinton collection of essays by leftist feminists who see her as a “token” of the rigged establishment rather than a ground-breaker for leftist change. They resent her reliance on “corrupting corporate intervention” and her habit of “favoring the politically and diplomatically expedient ‘imperial feminism.’”  According to one contributor, “What we need is not a woman for president; what we need is a movement.” As Lloyd writes, “Progressive feminists say they see right through this manipulative messaging, and aren’t falling for it.”

Many women, in short, don’t buy her “outsider” rhetoric and claims to victim status based merely on the accident of her double x chromosomes. And for all her pandering to Black Lives Matter, Hispanics, and the party’s loony left, Hillary’s choice of a bland, middle-aged, straight white male with a record of political opportunism merely confirms that she is an entrenched insider comfortable with Wall Street and the party establishment. Playing the “woman card” cannot compensate for her personal flaws and slight record of achievement. Perhaps that’s why only a fifth of voters are enthusiastic about the possibility of electing the first woman president.

So what has Hillary got instead of charisma, character, achievements, and even the thrill of first woman president? Voters who favor big government, increased entitlement spending, higher taxes on the “rich,” and continuing American retreat abroad. Voters who belong to public employee unions and are confident Hillary will bail out their states when publicly funded pension plans bankrupt state treasuries. Rent-seekers who benefit from green energy boondoggles based on global warming hysteria. Diversicrats who leverage identity politics into social and political capital. Battalions of economic ignoramuses who think you really can get something for nothing and socialism is cool. Bicoastal elites who compensate for their privilege by espousing federal policies and programs the cost of which they never, ever have to pay.

In other words, all those factions that want their “passions and interests” served rather than the security and interests of the country. The only question is, are there 65 million of them?

Categories: 2016 elections, Bernie Sanders' supporters, Bill Clinton, Clinton character, Clinton Foundation, Democrat National Convention, Foreign policy, Hillary Clinton, Immigration, Iran scam, Libya, Lovable Hillary Clinton, Obama
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‘Salon’ Fans Bernie Supporters’ Fire, Says #DemExit is ‘Serious’

August 1, 2016

‘Salon’ Fans Bernie Supporters’ Fire, Says #DemExit is ‘Serious’, PJ Media, Stephen Kruiser, July 30, 2016

demexitPhoto Credit: Tyler O’Neil, PJ Media

So much for convention afterglow.

Shortly after Bernie Sanders publicly endorsed Hillary Clinton a new hashtag trended on Twitter: #DemExit. The hashtag offered Sanders supporters a chance to vent their frustrations with the Democratic Party and with the sense that their candidate had been pressured into an endorsement. Rather than reach out to these disaffected voters, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) ignored them. Understood within the larger narrative that Sanders supporters were just whining brats who refused to concede and move on, #DemExit was dismissed as just more sour milk.But now that the latest leak of DNC emails proves that Sanders supporters have a legitimate right to feel cheated, #DemExit increasingly seems like an appropriate response to a rigged system.

The new leak shows that the DNC never took the Sanders campaign seriously, even when he was winning state after state. Rather than recognize that Sanders was attracting new voters to the party, members of the DNC chose to mock them and close ranks around Clinton.

There was another hashtag, #StillSanders, that sprung up and was quite active all through the night that Hillary was officially nominated. I was going to do a post highlighting the hardest-hitting tweets from that, but most were far too expletive-laden to share in this forum. It was exceedingly obvious, however, that Bernie’s exhortation and Sarah Silverman’s admonition weren’t resonating with the Sanders folk much. Or at all, really.

If this does come back to bite the Democrats it will be due to the very thing that we conservatives complain about the most: the party’s coziness with the mainstream media.

Up to this point, left-leaning new media have been rather in sync with the mainstream outlets. It was easy to do during the Obama years, as they were all on board with the directive to make the historic presidency seem perfect. More often than not, old media was taking cues and talking points from new.

Enter Dame van der Cankles.

Hillary Clinton redefines “polarizing.” If this woman were a Republican, the media wouldn’t don their “be nice to her because she’s a girl” kid gloves when dealing with her. They would note that even she probably doesn’t like herself half the time. It was always a calculated risk elevating such an execrable human being into another “Historic First” position for the Dems, but they probably figured that a combination of Bubba nostalgia and media cover would be enough to distract the nice people. When even that didn’t convince them, they hedged their bets by rigging the primary process.

Then they got caught.

It is still unclear what the Democrats offered Sen. Sanders that immediately changed him from an inspiring firebrand into a visibly defeated, garden variety politician for the DNC, even though he switched his registration back to “independent” while it was all going on. What is very, very clear though is that the passionate Sanders supporters don’t have a convenient “Off” switch that the party can flip in order to move on smoothly.

The party’s presumptions about the post-convention Sanders supporters is what may be the most mystifying thing in all of this. Admittedly, it never did seem to pick a clear emotional side on how it felt about them, vacillating between a dismissive attitude and enough worry that it had to undermine his campaign behind the scenes. Obviously, it should have erred on the side of worry.

One thing that was very clear from the beginning was the passion of the Sanders movement. That passion is what made it an overnight sensation. It is remarkably naive for the Democrats to have thought that the passion could be easily managed after a few head fakes to the far left by Hillary during the primary season. Sure, what they want is insane, but the Democrats have been steadily moving leftward for thirty years and can’t be too upset that Sanders merely attempted to make them be less coy about the end game. Bernie gave the Democrats’ coveted youth vote a taste of the Soviet American dream they’ve been tiptoeing towards since the late 1960s and the kids aren’t patient enough to play the long game. The concessions in the platform haven’t satisfied the throaty lust for socialism Bernie spent almost a year firing them up for:

The recent fights over the DNC platform reveal a real lack of support for progressive policy, especially on key economic issues. As Marcetic reported for In These Times “there’s no denying that the platform compromises on certain core progressive values.” While some suggested that the new platform was a “win” for Sanders, in the end the platform submits to corporate will on many issues.Committee delegates selected by Clinton and Wasserman Schultz voted down several measures dear to progressives’ hearts: “amendments advocating single-payer health care and a $15 minimum wage indexed to inflation, several proposals to halt climate change, language criticizing Israeli ‘occupation’ of Palestine and an amendment explicitly opposing the TPP trade agreement.” As Marcetic shows, delegates to the committee with corporate ties were among the most avid in promoting pro-business policy completely out of step with the sort of progressive values that once separated Democrats from Republicans. Unsurprisingly, those very same delegates were the ones connected to Clinton and Wasserman Schultz.

Yeah, lunatic stuff, but Hillary and Tim Kaine both keep using the phrase “progressive agenda” on the campaign trail. They might want to get an intern to Google “progressive” for them so they can find out exactly what that entails. Remember, the only reason the Congressional Progressive Caucus signed onto Obamacare is because they were promised that it would eventually lead to single-payer.

If you are wondering just how otherworldly this election has become, trust me, it’s even weirder than you think. Salon is complaining about Democrat “collusion” with the media too:

The corporate media was no ally to the Sanders campaign. With AP calling the primary for Clinton before California, New Mexico, New Jersey, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota were set to vote, many Sanders’ supporters felt betrayed by the press. As Bill Boyarsky reports for Truthdig, “The story was not just a scoop. It fed the hostility and cynicism of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ fervent supporters.”The Guccifer 2.0 leaks also reveal a disturbing pattern of collusion between the media and the DNC to support Clinton and not Sanders. Luis Miranda, the national communications director for the DNC, communicated with reporters from both Politico and the Wall Street Journal in efforts to discredit Sanders.

Welcome to what the rest of us have been fighting for decades, little proggies.

The Salon post concludes with what could be the biggest problem going forward for the Democrats — that the party isn’t taking the email leaks seriously:

Much in the same way Clinton blew off her own email scandal, we basically have crickets from the DNC and party leaders. The failure to take responsibility or reach out to disaffected supporters has created a real blowback where voters who backed Sanders are irate. Now many supporters just think the party is corrupt– and they have point.

There’s your Bizarro World: Salon is echoing conservative frustrations with the Democrats.

As always, it remains to be seen if the Republican Party can effectively take advantage of this turmoil. Well, it remains to be seen if you are still holding on to any faith in the GOP. As I voted #GOPExit a couple months ago, I’m not a big believer. Still, there are signs of some opportunity for it to do so.

Categories: #DemExit, 2016 elections, Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders' supporters, Democrat National Committee, Democrat Party, Democrat Party unity, Hillary Clinton
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#DemExit begins as Hillary Clinton coronation draws to close

July 29, 2016

#DemExit begins as Hillary Clinton coronation draws to close, Washington Times, S.A. Miller, July 28, 2016

Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders cheer at a rally in Philadelphia on Thursday during the final day of the Democratic National Convention. (Associated Press)

Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders cheer at a rally in Philadelphia on Thursday during the final day of the Democratic National Convention. (Associated Press)

A Pew Research Center survey this month found that 85 percent of Mr. Sanders’ supporters intend to vote for Mrs. Clinton, with 9 percent switching to Mr. Trump and 6 percent unsure whom they will back in November.

But Sanders supporters were skeptical of the polling and estimated that the number of defections among their ranks may be closer to 50 percent.

******************************

PHILADELPHIA — Hours after Hillary Clinton gave her speech Thursday accepting the Democratic presidential nomination and capping the national convention, thousands in the rank and file planned to quit the party in a #DemExit protest.

That is not the show of party unity Democratic officials hoped for coming out of the four-day convention, where they went to great lengths to quiet disgruntled supporters of Sen. Bernard Sanders and present an image of solidarity for the race against Republican nominee Donald Trump.

“It’s a dog-and-pony show,” Seamus Berkeley, a Sanders delegate from New Mexico, said of the convention. “They’re shutting opposition down and making it look like everyone is falling in line.”

From concerns over her environmental policy to the extent of her commitment to taxpayer-funded health care to her murky stance on the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade deal, Mrs. Clinton has not overcome the doubts of a number of Sanders delegates and supporters at the convention.

“I think she has work to do, and I think the party has some work to do to convince us that not only are they going to live up to that platform the party passed, but that they’ll work with us,” said Donna Smith, executive director of Progressive Democrats of America.

Rose Watson, 61, one of 200 Sanders volunteers credentialed for the convention, said they all were shut out after the first day.

The first day was when Mr. Sanders addressed the convention and party officials handed out signs for the audience to wave that said, “Stronger together.”

“If we’re so strong together, then why not let us back in the room?” said Ms. Watson, who plans to switch her registration from Democrat to independent.

Sanders backers were also stymied in their attempts to derail the nomination of vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine, angered by party officials’ clampdown on signs of protest within the convention hall and enraged by leaked emails in recent days showing that party officials conspired against Mr. Sanders’ campaign.

Ms. Watson said she would join a large contingent of Mr. Sanders’ delegates and supporters at the convention in what they have dubbed #DemExit — a Twitter campaign that has been masterfully promoted by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.

Ms. Stein aggressively wooed Sanders supporters during the convention, and many pro-Sanders demonstrators outside the convention and delegates inside the Wells Fargo Arena said they will vote for Ms. Stein in November.

Still, the Democratic faithful insist that Mrs. Clinton is on stronger footing after the convention and are optimistic that the party will coalesce behind her.

“There’s a lot of work to do,” said North Carolina delegate Marc Friedland.

He anticipated that the Clinton campaign would make a concerted effort to reach out to Mr. Sanders’ supporters. But he also said that the importance of party unity was often overemphasized in the media.

“We don’t want to leave anyone on the sidelines, but we’re not going to let them drag us backward,” he said.

Democratic strategist Brad Bannon said top-notch speeches from President Obama and other prominent Democratic leaders brought the party together at the convention. He predicted that Mrs. Clinton would get a bounce after Philadelphia.

“The difference between this convention and the Republican convention is that we have had really heavyweight speakers,” he said. “I noticed here that the mood got better every day, and its largely because of the speakers.”

Democratic consultant Craig Varoga agreed.

“Monday was Bernie Sanders’ night and everyone appropriately credited him for his great organizing, his victories and the fact that he generated millions of new voters,” he said. “The rest of the week has gone a long way to uniting everyone in the party in defeating Trump this November.”

Mr. Trump also experienced dissent within the party at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, especially from rival Sen. Ted Cruz, who refused to endorse him during a prime-time speech.

However, the rift among Republicans did not result in massive party defections.

The Clinton campaign mostly succeeded in putting on a show of unity. The outbursts from Sanders supporters were kept to a minimum after the first day. Mr. Sanders helped clear the way Tuesday to Mrs. Clinton’s uncontested nomination. Mr. Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden and vice presidential nominee Sen. Tim Kaine gave rousing speeches Wednesday. And Mrs. Clinton’s speech Thursday launched her into the general election race.

Democrats also got encouraging news in recent polls.

A Pew Research Center survey this month found that 85 percent of Mr. Sanders’ supporters intend to vote for Mrs. Clinton, with 9 percent switching to Mr. Trump and 6 percent unsure whom they will back in November.

But Sanders supporters were skeptical of the polling and estimated that the number of defections among their ranks may be closer to 50 percent.

“They need to be convinced, and Hillary has her work cut out for her to earn their votes,” said Chuck Pennacchio, a Sanders delegate to the convention from Pennsylvania.

Categories: #DemExit, 2016 elections, Bernie Sanders' supporters, Democrat National Committee, Democrat National Convention, Democrat Party unity, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton
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White Noise? What White Noise?

July 29, 2016

White Noise? What White Noise? Hot Air, Duane Patterson, July 29, 2016

I have no idea whether this video is on the up and up, but it seems genuine enough. This is a California Bernie Sanders delegate who has attended the Democratic Convention all week, allegedly, and like her fellow Bernie people, has been a little vocal in her anti-war, anti-Hillary, anti-establishment sentiments. When this woman and the rest of the Bernie delegation showed up early to claim their seats for the main event last night, Hillary Clinton riding in wearing her white pantsuit, with literally the only thing missing being the white steed on which to ride to the podium, the seats were already reserved by paid seat fillers wearing a Hillary shirt. The price to buy a crowd? $50 a person.

Where the Bernie people were crammed into was a pre-planned section by the DNC that happened to have a white noise generator behind them. That’s fancy talk for loudspeakers that are controlled by the convention sound board so that if there are any troublemakers booing or carrying on during Hillary’s speech, the speakers with canned crowd noise are instantly brought up to drown out the protesters.

Now when Hillary Clinton did mention having the need for having the strongest military in the world, you could hear the Bernie people starting to ramp up. But they instantly got drowned out. Now we know why.

Poor, delusional Bernie people. They never had a chance from start to finish. Never.

The fun part of this video is the first few minutes. If you want to pop the popcorn and enjoy all of it, be warned that the woman making the video gets a little more profane the more exasperated she gets.

(The video at the link does not embed. Here’s a YouTube version with essentially the same content. — DM)

Categories: 2016 elections, Bernie Sanders' supporters, Democrat National Convention, Hillary Clinton
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O’Keefe Undercover With Outraged Dems at the DNC

July 29, 2016

O’Keefe Undercover With Outraged Dems at the DNC, Project Veritas Action via YouTube, July 28, 2016

According to the blurb beneath the video,

In this new video from Project Veritas Action, James O’Keefe goes undercover as a Hillary Clinton supporter with outraged Democrats at the DNC. Angry protesters scream and shout about their hatred for Hillary Clinton and how they’ve been disenfranchised by the DNC, the Democratic Party establishment and political elites. James O’Keefe gets assaulted by an angry Bernie Sanders supporter. Watch this video to see what the mainstream media refuses to cover.

Categories: 2016 elections, Bernie Sanders' supporters, Democrat National Convention, Hillary Clinton
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Raising the Palestinian cause at the DNC

July 28, 2016

Raising the Palestinian cause at the DNC, Vice News, Dalia Hatuqa, July 28, 2016

pal rightsA delegate holds a sign reading ‘I support Palestinian Human Rights’ at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia [Tannen Maury/EPA]

An issue that was once sidelined even in progressive circles, Palestine was pushed to the forefront of the electoral campaign this year, with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders showing that policy change on a seemingly intractable conflict is possible.

For the first time, the platform reflected the right of Palestinians to “independence, sovereignty, and dignity” in addition to Israel’s security. In a recent poll (PDF) of American attitudes on the conflict, 49 percent of Democrats said they recommended economic sanctions or other more serious action to counter settlement construction.

***************

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Eva Putzova held a banner with a simple message just outside the Democratic National Convention (DNC) floor on Tuesday: “I support Palestinian rights.”

“I think it’s time that Democratic candidates – Hillary, Bernie or anybody else – start taking the issue seriously and start a real national conversation and get behind all human rights, including Palestinian rights,” said Putzova, a city council member from Flagstaff, Arizona.

She was among many pro-Palestine activists at the DNC this week who came out in a show of force unprecedented at other political conventions. They marched and rallied, held talks and town halls, carried signs and, at one point, raised a Palestinian flag on the convention floor.

“The issue is getting more media exposure, more people are aware,” Putzova said. “I think we are on the brink of changing the policy stands of the US, but it will take all of us to push the political elite. I think [Palestinians are] a community that has been marginalised for so long.”

An issue that was once sidelined even in progressive circles, Palestine was pushed to the forefront of the electoral campaign this year, with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders showing that policy change on a seemingly intractable conflict is possible.

In a debate last April, he pushed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to call the 2014 Israeli war on Gaza “disproportionate”. He said the US and Israel need “to treat the Palestinian people with respect and dignity” and that the US “has to play an even-handed role”. Sanders, however, was also criticised for not denouncing Israel more forcefully, and for the ousting of his campaign’s Jewish outreach director, who slammed Israel’s prime minister in a Facebook post.

A month later, Sanders assigned James Zogby, an advocate for Palestinian rights, and four others, including one of two Muslim congressmen, to the platform-writing committee, signalling his attempt to revise the party’s long-standing policy that favoured Israel.

“It took the work of a mass movement and a courageous person like Bernie Sanders, because if Bernie hadn’t elevated it, it wouldn’t have happened,” said Zogby, also President of the Arab American Institute, in a talk attended by pro-Palestine supporters in Philadelphia. “He gave us a qualitative boost forward.”

What’s on the platform?

On the DNC sidelines, pro-Palestine supporters discussed how the conflict with the Israelis was playing out on the domestic policy platform.

But in stark contrast to public support and activism, the party’s platform, which now supports a $15 minimum wage and Wall Street reform, did not include references to the Israeli occupation and its settlements.

Zogby said Clinton supporters cut out these references, fearing retribution from billionaire mogul and Republican donor Sheldon Adelson.  On an official level, Clinton’s backers said the call for negotiations for a two-state solution in the party’s platform was sufficient.

Going into the platform-writing committee, Zogby said he and other Sanders delegates were expecting to discuss removing a reference to Jerusalem being the “undivided capital” of Israel, and opposition to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

“We wanted to strike the BDS line, we wanted to strike out a line on Jerusalem,” said Zogby, who is also on the DNC’s executive committee. “I thought that would be the fight. I had no idea the fight would end up being over occupation and settlements.”

They lost on all counts, and pro-Clinton supporters said they couldn’t change the language. “Here’s what they told me: ‘We can’t do it because Adelson will come out against us,'” Zogby said. “He will come after you no matter what you do. The people who like [Adelson] won’t vote for you.”

The platform committee discussions leading up to the DNC also spurred controversy, as civil rights activist and scholar Cornel West made an impassioned appeal to change the language to include “an end to occupation and illegal settlements”.

He called Palestine a “Vietnam War” issue for young Americans, and likened the party’s indifference to the conflict to the same apathy to “these Negroes” in the Jim Crow era.

Despite the fact that the resolution was voted down, some believe that the discourse on Palestine has shifted.

For the first time, the platform reflected the right of Palestinians to “independence, sovereignty, and dignity” in addition to Israel’s security. In a recent poll (PDF) of American attitudes on the conflict, 49 percent of Democrats said they recommended economic sanctions or other more serious action to counter settlement construction.

A changing conversation

“The conversation has improved a lot … it is broader and more inclusive,” said Congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota, another Sanders pick on the DNC platform committee. “Over the past few years, members of Congress have gone to the Holy Land, not only to Israel, but also to Palestine. The perspective is changing, and it’s a good time to continue the work that you’re doing.”

Palestine supporters are banking on the presence of many activists and progressives in the city, in part because of Sanders’ candidacy, to expand and change the debate on the conflict.

They are also aware that the share of younger Americans sympathising with the Palestinian cause has risen significantly in recent years – from 9 percent in 2006 to 20 percent in July 2014, and finally to 27 percent today.

“We have seen some fairly remarkable changes in the landscape of how the issue of Palestine and Israel is being addressed – both in the news media and particularly within progressive circles,” said Mike Merryman Lotze, the American Friends Service Committee’s (also known as the Quakers) Palestine-Israel programme director.

“If we look back where the conversation was 15 years ago today, even really five years ago, we have to recognise that we are now in a fundamentally different place,” he said.

“That marks a shift … and that conversation has been pushed by the grassroots progressive movement.”

READ MORE: US Democratic Party – Closer to justice on Palestine?

Categories: 2016 elections, Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders' supporters, Democrat National Convention, Democrat Party, Democrat party platform, Hillary Clinton, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians
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The Day the Bernie Dream Died

July 26, 2016

The Day the Bernie Dream Died, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, July 26, 2016

bernie sad

Near Philadelphia’s City Hall, an obese woman wearing a marijuana leaf bikini was telling a television reporter why she supported Bernie Sanders. City Hall, once the tallest building in the world, is a gloriously magnificent edifice whose pillars are held up by representatives of all the races of the world and whose clock tower is topped by a 37-foot statue of William Penn, was besieged by Sandernistas.

The Democratic convention was underway. Bernie Sanders had endorsed Hillary Clinton. But his followers still believed. If not in Bernie, then in the radical movement that had coalesced around him.

A cheerful woman wearing a “Bernie or Bust” t-shirt told me that even if Bernie won, she would be voting for Jill Stein and the Green Party. It was unclear how Bernie Sanders could possibly win. Let alone how Jill Stein could win. But Bernie and Jill were against drones, banks and GMOs while Hillary Clinton was for them. And the mood grew uglier as the temperature approached one hundred degrees.

The crazier elements had converged around the historic Arch Street United Methodist Church which was “training” activists to protest non-violently. There were illegal aliens in green t-shirts laughing uproariously and scowling elderly Trotsky fan club members wearing BDS buttons surrounded by posters denouncing America for its “ongoing war” in Iraq (against ISIS) not to mention Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and most of the rest of the world. The Revolutionary Communist party marched angrily past.

There were also “Bernie Peacekeepers” wearing plastic placards proclaiming that they do not support violence of any kind. If anyone doubted their seriousness, the placards had a rainbow peace sign.

But the core Bernie elements had gathered around City Hall. They had marched the day before when there was no convention. And they were going to march today. A giant banner denounced the “racist drug war”. The ragged crowd carrying it had clearly found themselves on the wrong end of that war. Younger fans wore Bernie t-shirts. Entire families with dreadlocks held up handmade signs.

There was something millenarian and apocalyptic about the scene. Everyone knew that Bernie was going to announce that the revolution was over. And no one wanted to go home.

Officially the Democrats were here to coronate Hillary. MSNBC had set up a giant stage outside the Independence Visitor Center where tickets were being distributed to Independence Hall and its recreations of the rooms where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were signed. MSNBC personalities leered at viewers from giant video monitors and NBC staffers had swamped the Independence Hall bathrooms. But on the ground, it was all Bernie, Bernie and more Bernie.

There were no Hillary shirts in the streets. It was all Bernie. Silhouettes of Bernie’s glasses, Bernie and his bird, Bernie as a strapping young socialist and Bernie speaking to the masses. He was their Stalin or Saddam. His image was on shirts, signs and banners. Meanwhile elderly DNC delegates wearing blue lanyards nervously shuttled between bars eagerly catering to delegates. The painted donkeys in the squares, a tired gimmick, mostly went ignored. Even an “I’m With Her” button was a rarity.

In a hushed voice, a DNC delegate told me that it was important to elect someone in the middle. But the message in the streets was dramatically different. It wasn’t even about Bernie anymore. Bernie Sanders had tried to address his supporters asking them to behave and they had booed him. And that made the booing of Hillary’s name at the convention inevitable. Bernie the politician had sold out. But the radical left had already created Bernie the character who would go on fighting even when the politician wouldn’t. Bernie could start the revolution. But he couldn’t stop it. Because it was never about him.

The most extreme Sandernistas had converged on Philly certain that they would win. And for all of Hillary’s elaborate organization, her networks of influential cronies, she couldn’t stop them from ruining her coronation. The DNC was on the run. Debbie Wasserman Schultz had resigned. And DNC delegates were outnumbered by angry radical leftists waving signs denouncing capitalism.

The radical left was trying to devour the Democratic Party ahead of schedule. And it wasn’t a pleasant sight. Sandernistas crowded the 30th Street Train Station holding forth on a rigged election. They had arrived on stuffy Amtrak trains clutching wadded up cardboard signs. There were angry grad students down from Yale upset about income inequality and anti-war activists from New York City toting models of drones and photos of crying children. Meanwhile the temperature kept on climbing.

Philly was an oven. The locals apologized for the weather as if they had somehow caused it. But the sullen unforgiving heat seemed to echo the mood of Sanders supporters. The hotter it got, the louder and crazier the chants became. At the heart of what was supposed to be a celebration of Hillary, a passionate portion of her party’s base was demanding that she be sent to jail. It was a secret wish that Bernie Sanders had been forced to swallow and abandon, but his supporters had not forgotten.

And they would not forget.

Even before Bernie Sanders could sell out his followers at the DNC, the rising tension reached a crescendo and broke. The heat that had been growing all day could continue no more. Torrents of rain gushed down from the sky. Lightning flashed past skyscraper scaffolding and thunder boomed louder than the loudspeakers. Furious gusts of wind blew rain past a handful of umbrellas that had been used as parasols against the sun. The MSNBC stage was quickly deserted. And the Sandernistas, like drowned rats, raised up their cardboard signs as makeshift umbrellas against the rain.

Hours later, the final betrayal took hold. Bernie Sanders spoke at the DNC and sold out his loyalists. But they too had been preparing for the end.

More than one Sandernista spoke wistfully to me of Jill Stein and the Green Party. One leftist messiah had failed them. Bernie Sanders had put the Democratic Party ahead of the radical left’s agenda. But there were always uncompromising leftist radicals who would never be practical no matter what.

Sanders’ own supporters booed him. They booed any mention of Hillary. And they rode Amtrak home clutching wet signs calling for socialized medicine and an end to capitalism. Whether it is the Soviet Union or the Sanders Union, the left never recognizes that its revolutions have failed. It never learns anything from history except how to hate harder.

The Democratic Party had allowed the left to take over. And the left has no sensible stopping point. It is an endless cycle of revolutions, of mad political agendas and madder personalities that will not stop. Leftists like Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders unleash revolutions that they cannot control.

That is what always happens to the left. It is what happened at Berniegeddon in Philadelphia.

The Bernie dream is dead, but the dream of a totalitarian revolution of the left lives on. Next to the great historical monuments of America, the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, Benjamin Franklin’s grave and the Tomb of the Unknown Revolutionary War Soldier, the left vented its hatred for this country and its desire to erase its existence and its freedoms from the earth.

Categories: 2016 elections, Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders' supporters, Democrat National Convention, Hillary Clinton, Leftists
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There Will Be No Bernie Sanders Delegations on DNC Convention Floor

July 25, 2016

There Will Be No Bernie Sanders Delegations on DNC Convention Floor, Washington Free Beacon, , July 25, 2016

Demonstrators make their way around downtown, Monday, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention. On Sunday, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., announced she would step down as DNC chairwoman at the end of the party's convention, after some of the 19,000 emails, presumably stolen from the DNC by hackers, were posted to the website Wikileaks. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

AP Photo/John Minchillo

PHILADELPHIA—Only a handful of state delegations were given floor seats at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia—and none of them voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I. Vt.).

Unlike the Republican National Convention, where every delegate received a floor seat, the DNC has apportioned floor seats to delegations loyal to Hillary Clinton.

All of the delegations seated on the floor of the Wells Fargo Arena for the 2016 Democratic National Convention are from states won by Hillary Clinton during the primary campaign.

Delegates from Nebraska, Florida, New York, Virginia, Iowa, Arkansas, Illinois, and Pennsylvania are seated in front of the stage in the arena. The former secretary of state defeated Sanders in primary contests in all of those states.

Delegates from Maine, Oregon, Utah, and Rhode Island were given some of the worst seats in the hall towards the back. The delegation from North Dakota, a state won by Sanders, was tucked away in a cavern behind South Dakota, a state held by Clinton.

ND view

The delegation for Democrats living abroad, a group that voted overwhelmingly for Sanders, is also in the nosebleeds.

The Democratic convention convenes under a cloud of controversy, as thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Convention show evidence of pro-Clinton bias on the part of the officially neutral party organization.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.) was forced to step down from her role as DNC chairwoman after Sanders called for her resignation on Sunday morning.

Sanders supporters have been a vocal force so far in Philadelphia. Schultz was booed off the stage by Sanders loyalists at a breakfast for Florida delegates. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had Sanders signs thrust in her face as she attempted to speak with delegates from her home state of California.

Other supporters of the Vermont senator were heard chanting “lock her up” at a Monday morning protest in Philadelphia, a slogan coined by supporters of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at last week’s convention in Cleveland, Ohio.

Press officials from both the DNC and the convention’s communications team did not respond to inquiries about the delegate seating arrangement.

Update 3:02 p.m.: The headline of this post has been updated. A previous version said no Bernie Sanders delegates would be seated on the DNC convention floor. Individual delegates may be Sanders supporters, but the delegations on the floor will vote for Clinton.

Categories: 2016 elections, Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders' supporters, Democrat National Convention, Hillary Clinton
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