DNC charter at http://www.demrulz.org/wp-content/files/DNC_Charter__Bylaws_9.11.2009.pdf
Article 5, Section 4:
See also Tulsi Gabbard’s reasons for stepping down from the DNC:
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The “furriner” statement was me referring to myself, as the comments of others had led me to suspect that they were seeing some pattern in that map that wasn’t readily apparent to me. As the states weren’t labelled, I was having trouble telling exactly where the areas they were referring to were. So, I asked if anyone would be kind enough to clarify it for me.
How you got from that to “telling you how to discuss your election”, I have no idea.
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Some of those states, like Washington, Minnesota, and Illinois, are solid blue. Others, like Nebraska, are solid red.
This map shows that Hillary Clinton is not the preferred candidate in a lot of the country, including entire states, including entire blue states.
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I am well aware of the authorship of both the post with the question and the post starting this thread. That’s kind of my point.
Right now there are lots of Americans in various parts of the amorphous “left” who are throwing recriminations at one another as part of the electoral grieving process. It probably isn’t the most healthy way to deal with that grief, but it isn’t at all uncommon. What is profoundly unhelpful is for an outsider to get involved in the arguments, as you did in the first post, and adopt a polarized position which moreover displays some lack of understanding of our electoral process…which BTW is perfectly acceptable in someone who does not live here (and sadly widespread among those that do), but maybe is a good reason for such a person not to start a thread like this.
Should a white person tell people of color how they should be dealing with racism? Should a man tell women how they should be dealing with sexism? Of course not. So why should you tell Americans at this point in time, while many people are still feeling pain, how we should be understanding our election? Doesn’t it make more sense to express sympathy, and wait until we are a little more recovered (or maybe never) before “getting [your] own position on the table?”
Incidentally, Tulsi’s fights with DWS were no secret, and she certainly believed that the debate scheduling was unfair to Sanders, but I doubt you’ll find her anywhere explicitly accusing the DNC of having broken its rules, and she is still a strong supporter and active member of the Party.
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Who cares if it’s healthy. Your candidate and her team just saddled us with a Trump presidency, repub congress, and a fucked supreme court, and is not interested AT ALL in a single bit of soul searching. I am not interested in 8 years of the orange ass-hat, so the Democratic party needs to 1)admit they have utterly failed at policy and this election 2) change meaningfully, or it’s another gauranteed loss in 4 years.
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It’s more than flirting at this point. Antisemitism and the American voter are sitting in the car after the date election, and antisemitism has its dick out and is saying “yo, I bought you drinks, what the fuck?”
This, this, and all of this. For me, voting for Clinton was never the “adult” thing to do. It would have been if I were a Democrat, which I absolutely am not. For me, voting for Clinton would be crossing party lines, which I only do if the candidate has earned my vote (ahahaha, nope) or if it’s a shit-scared lesser of two evils deal. I’m tired of voting for the Lesser Of Two Evils, I don’t think I’m alone, and it was only a matter of time before the shit hot the fan.
In before smarmy “so you admit you don’t know how political parties work? Bernie’s not a real Democrat” comments.
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I think this proves my point.
FWIW, my candidate was Sanders, and I lobbied hard for him both on this and other forums and in meatspace.
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No, light has been shed on several instances of DNC bias.
There was the instance of the DNC writing talking points for the campaign regarding Sanders accusations around the application of funds raised under the “Clinton Victory Fund”. Totally different instance of bias and collusion. There are other examples. Lets not get into another round of proof by rolling out the litany of violations. This is all well established and accepted at this point. Bernie has no recourse, all the players have got their comeuppance, are “out”, or will be out, there is no sense in defending the behavior any more.
The same behavior is evident in the Campaigns acceptance of debate questions in advance.
In a just world Clinton would have stepped down before the DNC convention in the light of this and we would have President Elect Sanders now. But it didn’t. People who supported Clinton decided that this kind of cheating was acceptable, and/or convinced themselves that it was ok to behave this way. Its a lowering of standards that I can’t stomach. All too small a leap to a monster like Trump.
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[quote=“thirdworldtaxi, post:26, topic:89323”]
Your candidate and her team just saddled us with a Trump presidency, repub congress, and a fucked supreme court, and is not interested AT ALL in a single bit of soul searching.
[/quote]Pretty sure the only ones claiming to be blameless are not the Democrats on this one.
Yeah, opinions on interwebz is proof of stuff.
FWIW, my candidate was Sanders,
What does that have to do with literally anything you’ve said so far?
Assessment of the abject failure of the Democratic party is crucial right now. If you disagree, say why. I’m beyond tired of the mystical identity politics of modern Democrats.
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Clinton blames Comey. Estab Dems are blaming sexism, racism, Assange, etc… No one in the party is acting like there is anything wrong with the party. I’m not following you.
Edit: Any hope that I had of a meaningfully reformed Democratic party is rapidly dissipating.
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This times a thousand. I am really nervous that we will backslide in gains made in the last decade due to infighting.
Support for equality, kindness, and inclusiveness are our planks.
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There is nothing that shows a clear Bernie path to victory. PA was assumed to be a fan (despite nominating Hillary in 08) and Virginia is establishment country, there is no clear path to victory to throw in Clinton’s face.
Hillary is right to blame Comey, because he fanned Trump’s flames twice in the same election season while technically using impartial language. Hillary is also not a center of power for the DNC after losing the election to Trump, so her opinion is no longer the DNC’s whose clear leader is Obama for the moment. Obama has immediately taken the high road just like Bernie and has made “working with Trump’s America” the priority.
You also have to realize Clinton campaigned on social change quite popularly while Trump campaigned on the opposite and the opposite won. The DNC immediately making statements within 3 days is ridiculous, and likely would have been a shift to isolationist and socially regressive. You act like rebuilding from the ground up in one of the largest institutions in the world could possibly happen when the final votes are still being counted.
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There’s a lot that could be said in the ‘but.’ In the end there is only one Hillary Clinton, she’s a very unique figure who lost and isn’t going to return. The DNC’s looking for new leadership and we aren’t a part of that search. Our chat on the BBS about internal party politics of a party most of us are not insiders of isn’t likely to bring us together.
There’s endless finger pointing and blaming possible here, and no one’s innocent. No one. So fault-finding, no matter how high-minded the reason, is likely to just spark more of the same horrible counter-productive conflicts we really don’t need to keep repeating at this point in history. The pragmatists will self-justify. The idealists will self-justify. The moderates will self-justify. The partisan Dems will self-justify. We’ll all self-justify and then pick at each other’s excuses and fight some more. I’d much rather try to have as constructive discussion as possible of what we can do as private citizens (American or otherwise) to bring the pragmatists and idealists, the left and the liberals, and the Democrats together for common action in the face of the major crisis we face.
For the record, as someone who was a liberal, pragmatist, leftist, and Democrat in that order, I know I could have done a million things better and talked to people whose values were ordered differently in hundreds of ways that were more effective and kind. I regret I was as abrasive as I was, I regret not doing more that was more effective and constructive, apologize to those I snarked at, fought with, dismissed unfairly, and failed to find common ground with. If we’re looking for faults we should all start at home and probably just stay there.
And with that I’m out of this topic, since I cringed when I saw it and hope at some point we’ll all find a way to find enough reconciliation to get past it and try to work out something constructive.
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That’s true. I guess my main point is, the DNC failed us, don’t count on them to do any better next time. It’s we who have to learn not to be surprised by the DNC’s embubblement, and to not let ourselves get embubbled with them, which I will freely admit I’m as guilty as anyone of. You and Melz are spot on. We either hang together or hang separately, because no rescue is coming from on high.
I strongly agree. I just don’t want us to make the same mistake next time of believing what the Democrats sold us. I’m especially kicking myself because I’d never trusted them until this surprisingly decent electable centrist candidate came along named Obama and gave me a little misplaced faith in the DNC. I’ll never make that mistake again. Lightening isn’t going to strike the DNC twice.
Yeah, you’re right. Really what we need to do is just dig in for the duration and fight from the grass up. If some people need to grieve, I don’t blame them, but I’d rather not spend my energy on that.
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i’ve been active in my county democratic party for 32 years. i was a jackson delegate to the texas state convention in 84 and an obama delegate in 08. it takes a lot of time to be involved and i’ve never tried for any of the leadership positions because of how much more time that would take. my county chair in 08 became part of the state leadership from 09-12 but she never went on to do any national committee work. still, her experiences and the connections she made have allowed our county to be somewhat more attuned to what was going on. i would advise everyone who wants to make a difference in the democratic party as an instrument of social change to get more involved, not less. if you aren’t willing to put your time, effort, and even money into the fight just who do you think is going to be making the difference?
most of the complaints i see being voiced here are along the lines of “why isn’t the democratic party a perfect vehicle for everything i want to see being done?” and “why haven’t the democrats taken the fall for everything and gotten out of the way for the perfect people to take charge?” i would answer the first one by saying that it’s because the democratic party and the dnc are both made up of a large collection of imperfect human beings who can mostly agree to a particular set of beliefs as expressed by the platform. i would answer the second by saying that there is plenty of blame to share for what happened. here’s a quick roundup of my favorites–the nonfeasance of the press in failing to cover the actual policy issues in the race, the malfeasance of the press in spending so much time on the emails, the misfeasance of the press in minimizing the nature of trump’s white supremacist backing, the failure of comey to adhere to standard practice to not reveal investigative details so close to the election which the attorney general tried to warn him not to, the dnc for not realizing that their “likely voter” paradigm had shifted and that many more rural white voters were going to go to the polls than they expected, as well as the electoral college itself which started as a means of maintaining the slave power and has continued to overrepresent the rural stretches of the u.s. there are numerous reasons for the election results we got. for the dnc to fall on their swords for the whole thing would be about as sensible as trying to clear a blocked toilet in a burning building.
given the results of the election i have little confidence that sanders could have won more electoral votes than clinton did. given that a sanders-type universal health care plan went down in flames in colorado, a state clinton won, i think the republicans would have painted him as someone determined to raise your taxes and share your hard-earned money with all of those illegal immigrants and lazy brown-skinned people which would have drawn out the same rural white people they drew out against clinton.
anyway, i want to repeat the most important thing i said in this comment but first i want to take two quotes from your message which contradict each other–
the only way they are going to do better is if we get involved and stay involved. become part of your local/county democratic party. work for what you believe and work for the party. canvass, voter registration drives, get out the vote efforts, work some elections. go to the state conventions and if you have the time and/or the energy get involved at the state level. the party will never represent your views if you don’t take part.
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I hear all of what you’re saying, and agree with almost all of it completely. But I also hear when the DNC delegates say they’ll vote for who they want regardless of what the DNC ground-troops and voters cast ballots for. That has to change for the DNC to be viable again, and I don’t see how a fundamentally undemocratic primary process can be be made democratic through democratic means.
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i’m not really sure what you’re talking about with this. are you talking about the superdelegates? are you talking about pledged delegates from the primaries? if you could clarify that point i could better understand your concerns.
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I’m referring to the superdelegates. Am I misunderstanding how the DNC rules work? And if I am, then did the superdelegates ignore the rules in the primary?
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Not a rule violation.
I was just responding to your use of “your candidate” in your reply to me.
[quote=“thirdworldtaxi, post:31, topic:89323”]
Assessment of the abject failure of the Democratic party is crucial right now. If you disagree, say why.[/quote]
I don’t think it is crucial “right now”, we will probably do a better job after the dust has settled. Venting might be therapeutic, which isn’t a bad thing, but for reasons I’ve detailed I don’t like this thread as the place for it.
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