No, I’m literally asking if you are going to vote for Warren if it’s a choice between him and Trump.
That should be a very easy question to answer, but it’s also very informative of what you really care about.
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Those analyses are fundamentally flawed. There are a relatively large number of Republicans who vote in the Democratic primaries (and vice-versa), due both to cross-party registration and states that allow open primaries (almost half).
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How would Olympia Dukakis do against Woody Harrelson?
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There’s some very obvious whoppers in that tweet storm that was easy to pick apart on Google, I doubt it gives a clear picture at all.
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Michigan has open primaries. I have voted in the Republican primary in the past, possibly more frequently than the Democrat primary. I pick the least worst candidate no matter what primary I vote in.
Full disclosure: I’m not a member of any party.
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Doing research is arduous work, would you mind at least pointing out which whoppers in there were easy to pick apart, if not your sources?
Here is what I found regarding each assertion I identified in this thread. I have only found one really weak point, which is the assertion that Demos.org signed the letter by WFP decrying harassment by Bernie supporters.
Claim: Demos.org signed the letter by WFP
This claim does not seem to be supported by the evidence. I tried searching demos.org for any of the exact names using the query site:demo.org ("Alicia Garza" OR "Jessica Byrd" OR ...). I found honorary board members like Heather McGhee, but no-one on the real board).
Claim: 2018 was the first year Demos gave funding to WFP
Looping in @jerwin, I found that you can download the Demos.org’s previous financial statements here: https://www.demos.org/financial-statement-archive
You can see that while they wanted to support the WFP (specifically the POC caucus within it), they did not give any of their chapters any money until 2018, which is the assertion made in the thread. They did give an org called “Center for Working Families” $31,000 in 2015-2016, but if I understand correctly this is a policy think tank working with the WFP, not part of the WFP itself nor involved in its endorsements. It seems to be a DBA of the Progressive America Fund.
Meanwhile the three of the organizations they gave money in 2017-2018 were:
- New Jersey Working Families Alliance – A state chapter of the WFP.
- Working Families Organization, Inc. – Nonpartisan advocacy group for working families in general (*wink*), works with the WFP.
- Working Families Party, Inc. – The WFP.
Claim: Amelia Warren Tyagi was on the board of Demos as recently as May
The wayback machine does show Amelia Warren Tyagi as the board co-chair as of May 2 2019: https://web.archive.org/web/20190502112930/https://www.demos.org/about/board-trustees
Neat thing about Web Archive is if you open it up in the browser dev tools and look at the network request, it shows you the the original headers sent with that page as well, prefixed by “x-archive-orig-”. The snapshot above indicates it was last modified on May 1st, one day before that snapshot was taken:
In fact, if you go to her main organization’s website in Wayback, Business Talent Group, you can see she was listed as the current chairman of Demos the day this story broke: https://web.archive.org/web/20190924144534/https://businesstalentgroup.com/leadership/amelia-warren-tyagi/
Where is the announcement of her stepping down from the Demos board? That would really poke a hole in this. As it is, it looks like a crappy attempt at scrubbing her connection to Demos.
ETA: I found an article by Status Coup investigating this whole incident where the Demos spokesperson tells Status Coup that Amelia Warren stepped down this past Spring: https://statuscoup.com/does-elizabeth-warrens-daughters-financial-connection-to-working-families-party-hang-a-cloud-over-endorsement/
Claim: Paul Egerman is a) Warren’s campaign treasurer and b) on the board of Demos now
Paul Egerman does appear to be the treasurer for Warren’s campaign committee: https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/forms/C00693234/1302425/
… And he is listed right now on the Demos board:
Claim: WFP was broke
I don’t really know how to verify this claim honestly without having my own sources in the WFP.
The relevance of Demos stating in 2016 that it intended to give money to WFP, years before Warren declared her campaign, is that it shows that there was no change in intent due to her candidacy. They said that they were going to do something, then they did it. It’s not like they said they were going to do one thing, then did another.
The timing of when they did exactly what they said they were going to do is not a scandal.
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Dēmos has already identified opportunities to work with an expanded universe of allies to align racial justice with affirmative democracy reform strategies including:
…
on-going and support to the people-of-color caucus within the Working Families Party.
That is not an announcement of intent to financially support WFP. It is just not. Give me something better than that.
It’s literally one of three things they say they do:
- come up with ideas
- do research
- give money to allies
Any time they say “support,” feel free to substitute “fund.”
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This is willful denial of reality. “We are going to support” is an announcement of intent to financially support. What other kind of support can we imagine they meant? Military support? Moral support? Emotional support?
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Organizational support? Policy support? Advocacy support? Advice?
I mean just look at the rest of that list mentioned above:
- drafting the Voting Rights and Campaign Finance Reform Sections of the #Vision4BlackLives national policy platform,
- working with staff to present workshops to all of the affiliates of the newly formed People’s Action on these issues
- expanding work within PICO beyond the three existing organizations who were part of the first cohort
- accepting invitations to expand this work to a deep dive with organizations in California and New Mexico, and running a racial equity learning program for a state donor’s table.
Only the PICO line-item seems like it involves funding. The rest regard drafting policy, training, and educating.
Show me at least that they explicitly meant financial support in that line-item for the black caucus within WFP. Look at what I have gone through the trouble of trying to show explicitly to you. Fucking reciprocate.
And you know what? I’ll go ahead and do that work too. I’ll read that whole damn document to see what they were talking about.
All of which would cost them money to offer and would be measured in dollars anyway. Any of which could just as easily be done as an inappropriate favour in an explicit exchange of support for political endorsement. There is no difference if they gave $45,000 or if they paid their employees $45,000 to provide a service. The “support” they offered was always going to have dollars attached or it wouldn’t be support.
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Straight talk:
Breaking down how Sanders must have been robbed of an endorsement to Warren only reinforces the feeling some people have that a Sanders candidacy will be some version of:
“Sanders is the best person to lose to Trump because then we can have months talking about how he was robbed. With graphs.”
Even in the theoretical world you’re seeking to evoke, where Sanders was cunningly outmaneuvered by secret non-progressives (with almost identical platforms), I have to say, that doesn’t make Sanders look good.
The Working Families Party had a vote. If you didn’t like the terms of that vote, fine, but a donation wouldn’t have bought majority support.
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Yes, actually, as someone that literally does organizing, there is quite a bit of difference. There are plenty of organizations out there that offer to help our group educate and train our people on various roles, but you know what would help us the most? Being able to afford a physical space, pay people to organize full-time, purchase equipment, make propaganda, etc.
And by “help us the most”, I mean “be a precondition for us to being able to really do anything else”.
You moved from saying that they explicitly were wanting to financially support the WFP, to saying “Well doing anything for them is the same as giving them money right?” That’s disingenuous and you know it.
Pretending that declaring intent to support and then supporting with money is inconsistent is disingenuous, and you know it.
There’s no corruption here, beyond the usual, “people who are involved in political NGOs are tightly networked with each other and politicians.”
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If you’re an organizer, you understand the concept of “In-kind donations”.
And if you’re an organizer, I hope you’re not posting on the BBS as a professional exercise.
If you don’t calm down, this isn’t a good faith discussion.
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I don’t mean there is no difference from a logistical perspective. Anyone who has had a wedding knows the difference between cash and a second toaster. There is no difference, however, from the perspective of laws that govern campaign finance, bribery, embezzlement, extortion, etc. All the things we’d look at if we were wondering whether something was corrupt.
I entered this thread never having heard of Demos or WFB. Because of this thread I’ve looked at both. I’ve read what you have to say and what others have to say. When you said that Demos’ 2016 statement that they intend to support WFB was not an indication that they intended to support them by spending money I was straight up incredulous.
Sorry, what I should have said, rather than trying to argue, which I really don’t care to do, is that you totally lost me there. In my mind, knowing that Demos already made public their belief in WFB in 2016 blows up any notion that the support was sudden or based on a current political campaign without further evidence that it was.
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Yeah, if you are loudly pro-Sanders but vehemently anti-Warren, I really question whether that is based on the actual policy goals and platforms of the two candidates.
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Yet, you still haven’t answered the pretty simple yes/no question from @LurksNoMore.
(And your answer is important because depending on what you pick will be a big signal if you’re interested in constructive debate or if you’re just trying to be an agitator.)
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Okay, so now I found something that pokes an explicit hole in this narrative:
So the 2015-2016 contribution to the Center for Working Families did constitute financial support to one arm of the WFP (though not the endorsing arm). I do not know enough about how organizations this complex work, and if this completely blows the narrative that WFP was broke and being courted with new funding. It is something that would need to be addressed in detail before moving forward.
@LurksNoMore, so what do you think that judgement is based on?
Come on.
