See I hang out here too much. Posted this with a different comment on FB and a friend of mine responded with a slew of shit the right did in his mind. I guess that’s the only way you can support Trump – by finding democrats who have done worse things in your mind. (He brought up the whole Hamilton thing – real on topic)
Fair enough, I rescind the comment. Lesson to me to not post first thing in the morning when I’m not awake and my reading comprehension skills are shit. My apologies. But every time I see “Clinton” and “classified emails”, it bugs the shit out of me since so few understand what the actual reality is.
“The plan” assumes some sort of ridiculous conspiracy, perpetuating the GOP’s narratives doesn’t help get us a better government, nor does it reform these poor practices.
“Used off-the-books comms to evade FOIA” is not a ridiculous conspiracy; as Clinton’s defenders have been arguing for months, it’s almost standard practice amongst US politicians. And FOIA-evasion was almost completely ignored by the GOP, who instead based their attack on imaginary bullshit about classified documents.
If you want, you can continue to characterise any and all criticism of the establishment Dems as a right-wing conspiracy. But if you do, you’ll just keep on repeating the fuck-up that gave you Trump.
Continuing to glomp onto every minor quibble (which it continues to be) introduced by the Republicans in a purity purge will continue repeating the fuck-up that gave you Trump.
It isn’t what I’d prefer but obviously Trump is better than wanting the DNC improved, right?
It’s not ridiculous to assume, and may well be part of the Clinton team’s motivations but there were other motivations that were clearly important to them for which we have a lot of evidence - wanting an integrated solution, wanting to use a specific unsupported client, compatibility with a prior existing workflow, etc. Given the lack of evidence to substantiate the claim it is a conspiracy theory even if it seems likely it was among the motivations.
It was a fuck-up regardless of the motivations, though the suggestion that Clinton’s problem was insufficient criticism by her supporters is pretty confusing to me.
I agree that there is no definitive evidence as to motivations; that’s why I said “probably”. I accept the possibility that the motivation was purely frustration at the standard comms system; I think that FOIA played a role, but it’s possible that it didn’t.
However, around here, motivations generally don’t count as a defence. If you act to mislead parliament, or get caught in a conflict of interest situation, you’re in deep shit whether you meant to do it or not. It’s the responsibility of the politicians to ensure that they are in full compliance with all relevant ethics laws, including things like FOIA.
It’s a matter of opinion on terminology, but I’d characterise it as “highly plausible hypothesis about an ambiguous situation” rather than “conspiracy theory”. YMMV.
[quote=“nemomen, post:162, topic:91670, full:true”]It was a fuck-up regardless of the motivations, though the suggestion that Clinton’s problem was insufficient criticism by her supporters is pretty confusing to me.
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Again, perspectives will vary, but IMO:
Insufficiently vigorous critique helped her win the primary. The muting of left- critique during the main election helped her in the general, but it wasn’t enough to overcome her flawed candidacy and lousy campaign. The post-election attempt by the establishment Dems to retcon Clinton into some sort of tragic liberal saint is actively counterproductive.
I think we’ll just need to agree to disagree on that one. Also, FWIW, were Sanders to have won the primary there’s no reason to assume he’d have won in the general. Some of his negatives were a lot more serious than Clinton’s. I’d have strongly backed him in the general despite his many, serious problems just as I had with Clinton, and would have been fine with offering the complicated explanations for why his rape porn and Sandinista “down with America” cheering business needed to be contextualized just like Clinton’s emails. There was no perfect candidate, just as there never has been, and purism has so far never worked at getting one.
They’d have had a vigorous whack at him, to be sure.
OTOH, much of the pessimism about a Sanders candidacy from the Clinton camp was based around the idea that the GOP would call him a commie, and that this would be devastatingly effective.
There are several problems with that:
Crying wolf. The GOP have been screaming about communism for sixty years; it’s lost its power. They claimed Obama was a communist, for fuck’s sake.
Public opinion. Measured on the issues, most Americans do support moderate democratic socialist policies on taxation, health care, education, etc.
Sanders’ response. As was shown during the primaries, his standard approach when “accused” of being a socialist (“actually, I’m a democratic socialist, and let me tell you what that means…”) was highly effective at convincing independent voters. The old-school GOP hates socialism, and the old-school Dems are terrified of being associated with it, but voters below fifty increasingly don’t give a shit about ideological labels.