@oranpkelley and @William_Holz, I don’t think your conversation is progressing in the slightest, and it’s edging into personal attack territory. I don’t mean to hurt anyones feelings, but maybe a break is in order before someone says something they regret.
8 Likes
I’m already groovy, I also agree it wasn’t furthering the conversation! 
4 Likes
As a criticism of the Clinton campaign, I think this would do nicely as the basis for some navel gazing at campaign HQ.
Righto.
1 Like
It’s the whole thesis of the article. But if I have to pick the most egregious phrases, I’d go with sentence 3. The whole thing is an attempt to paint Clinton’s position as a failure. Then there’s also this great bit of circular reasoning: “Superdelegates,…, have,…, not previously voted against the pledged-delegate or popular-vote leader for one of two reasons: either the candidate leading in pledged delegates and the popular vote has been a “strong front-runner” with more than 59 percent of the pledged delegates, making superdelegate votes immaterial, or else the candidate behind in pledged delegates and the popular vote has conceded prior to the Democratic National Convention, rendering superdelegate votes essentially meaningless;”
To paraphrase: “Superdelegates have never been needed because no candidate’s ever been uncooperative enough to declare themselves the strongest candidate while losing the majority.” Or, “Bernie’s campaign should continue because he’s the most stubborn candidate ever.”
A nonbinding pledge is nothing but an endorsement. Politicians endorse each other all the time. It’s the entire purpose behind having a party. Are you really saying it’s irresponsible for them to say, “Hey people who voted for me (and therefore trust my judgement), I think X is the best choice for the job?” It’s not like you’re hearing anyone say “I’d like to flip to Bernie, but I already made a promise to Hillary.” Their opinions are supposed to sway public opinion, because it’s literally their job to make decisions for us.
And besides, lots of superdelegates do flip to the popular vote winner. Bill Clinton cast his vote for Barack Obama.
1 Like
I’m thinking hard about what you might mean by this. You mean navel gazing on the part of Sanders or on the part of Clinton?
If you mean Sanders then you are demonstrating the problem: Hear a criticism of Clinton? Level a criticism at Sanders.
Clinton and surrogates have been criticizing Sanders and Sanders supporters in an effort to get Sanders out of the campaign because they think Sanders campaigning is cost them votes. Sanders is still in the race. Their strategy has failed.
Find a way to minimize the vote loss under the assumption that Sanders is staying, or find a different approach to get Sanders to drop out. More of the same is dumb.
6 Likes
If we’re thinking of the same town hall question, I’d argue that’s not really a fair reading of what she said. Fun fact: The guy who asked that question showed up on Reddit a couple weeks ago to say he switched to team Hillary.
I wasn’t thinking of a particular statement, more of a general tone, but google gave me this one:
“There is a persistent, organized effort to misrepresent my record, and I don’t appreciate that, and I feel sorry for a lot of the young people who are fed this list of misrepresentations,”
If you want people’s votes, telling them you feel sorry for them because they are dumb isn’t the best approach.
8 Likes
Can we feel sorry for them if we think they’re being lied to?
Try going through your day tomorrow, and every time you express an opinion, imagine someone saying, “I feel sorry for you that you believe that.” See how many contexts that would make you feel not insulted.
Feeling sorry for someone because they believe a politician is saying they do not have sufficient judgement to make a decision for themselves. It’s infantilizing.
10 Likes
Oh, sorry. Too vague.
I mean it would be a good start from Clinton to do some self-criticism.
–eric
2 Likes
That’s a bit of a projection from the quote you posted, isn’t it? “There is a persistent, organized effort to misrepresent my record, and I don’t appreciate that, and I feel sorry for a lot of the young people who are fed this list of misrepresentations.” I read it as “There are people spreading lies, and I feel sorry that young people have to sort through them.”
The message boils down to “If you don’t trust me, you’ve been lied to.” How do you get from “You don’t think I’m trustworthy” to “I am trustworthy” without “you’re wrong?”
1 Like
That looks to me like a tortured reading. My reading is a lot closer to her literal words, so I don’t know if accusations of “projection” fit. If she meant what you said then she could have phrased it better, and leaving out the words, “I feel sorry for” is always going to decrease her chances of sounding condescending.
Be trustworthy. Clinton, apparently, can’t figure that out.
Here’s an example of a response that could have been given that would give people something to vote for instead of just being petulant:
“A Greenpeace [1] activist was frustrated that I wouldn’t pledge not to take money from oil and gas, and it’s kind of blown up. Of course candidates can’t directly take money from oil and gas but everyone candidate is going to have taken money from individuals who work for oil and gas companies - those companies just employ so many people. But what this is really about is whether I can be trusted to stand up for the American people when their interests clash with big corporations. I’m telling you right now that I can. I am going to fight for you, not for lobbyists. And the first thing I’m going to do is start working on campaign finance reform so that in the future we won’t all be sitting around wondering if our leaders are bought. [2]”
- It was a Greenpeace activist, not “the Sanders campaign” who touched the whole thing off, which makes complaining about other people lying sort of rich.
- Campaign finance reform is part of her platform that actually addresses the central criticism.
6 Likes
You seem to think that having a membership card in your wallet is important. Uppercase or lowercase, the d/Democratic s/Socialist movement in the US (unlike, say, the Socialist Workers Party) considers itself a tendency of the Democratic party. Even the Party has recognized this, which is why as Senate candidate he has been endorsed by the DSCC and DNC, and the Party has repeatedly allowed him to be listed on their primary ballots.
[quote=“oranpkelley, post:148, topic:78851”]
Particular because what slim chance Sanders may have to win is not dependent on his continuing to run hard.[/quote]
The Sanders campaign has never been about Sanders. It was rather about wresting the Party back from the New Democrats who took it over in the late 80s. Running as hard as possible as long as possible is the essence of that campaign.
Clinton has only one person to blame for her unfavorables, and it aint Sanders.
9 Likes
Her husband?
1 Like
No, it’s mostly the relentless negative campaigning and fruitless muckraking of the republicans. It’s a testament to their political nous that’s they’re still going and likely to be back in the white house again despite all that.
This is paradoxical: Earn trust by being trustworthy but start from not being trusted. She can’t point to her record because anything she’s done right gets labeled as pandering. Her voting record isn’t good enough because she didn’t do enough. How do you earn trust if mistrust can just be heaped on you by insinuation? She’s promising to reign in the financial industry, and trying to explain how she’ll do it, but no one wants to listen because they already decided she’s shady.
Yes, that response is a better one. It’s also being made with a cool head outside the heat of the moment. It’s telling that every time she’s ever lost her temper is documented and written about extensively (hint: because it’s comparably rare). If never getting angry was a requirement for office we’d be having a coronation for His Low Energeticness Jeb Bush.
I could go cherry pick quotes too that address the topic in a better way, but is that going to do anything but waste both of our time? She’s explained that donations come from citizens, not companies, but Bernie didn’t change his message and everyone followed along. She also explained that the fundraisers are to get money for downticket races, and Bernie still called them obscene. Pointing out that Republicans are super well-funded? Bernie still don’t care. She made the mistake one time of trying to point out it’s not surprising that people who work in downtown New York would like her, and yes it wasn’t the most articulate argument but it didn’t have to get blown up into “Hillary defends Wall Street ties because 9/11.” If you’re arguing with a wall, how many attempts do you have to make before you can be excused for deciding it’s not worth it?
If any one person is to blame for hating Hillary for taking donations it’s not her, it’s Bernie Sanders. You need money to win, and you need to win before you can make changes, but he’s based his whole campaign around saying that story’s not good enough.
I was being facetious, but thank you for the linguistic insight!
If we could combine English nouns the same way, that first sentence could be expressed simply as “The Democrat-primary-deadlock-situation-superdelegate-decision.”
2 Likes
Ah, so THAT’S what she said in those Golden Sacks speeches.
5 Likes
Donations come from citizens, fundraisers are for downticket races, republicans are funded, of course people from her home town like her. As I said, that’s all fine for debate club. The implication of the criticism was that she is for sale. The response to the criticism has to be: I am not for sale! It concerns me that Clinton and her team can’t seem to be able to work that out, because it bodes very poorly against Donald Trump.
If Donald Trump said “The difference between me and Hillary is that if people throw dollar bills at my motorcade, I won’t stop to pick them up.” What would Clinton say? I have a horrible sinking feeling she’d say, “Hey, my motorcade didn’t stop to pick them up!”
If Donald Trump bought a tie with diamonds embedded in it worth about $700k and said, “See this tie, I bought this tie for about the same amount Goldman Sachs paid for Hillary.” Then would Clinton’s campaign get indignant about her totally legitimate speaking career?
“Everyone slips up sometimes” is very humanizing and it worked wonders for my current Prime Minister. But while its good cover for saying the wrong thing went you can credibly argue you meant something kind or wise, it’s not good cover for saying something condescending when everyone knows you meant it. As for keeping a cool head, I know Clinton can do it (I watched some of those Benghazi hearings, she was incredible), and her campaign staff had better be able to do it. It’s really hard for me to believe that the approach they have taken to the Sanders campaign has been anything but scripted. She’s got to get a better script if she wants to win.
7 Likes
