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Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)


Simon

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Chelsea Clinton is a really smart woman. She did a nice job tonight.

 

Hillary had a good speech, I loved the policy statements. She did exactly what I hoped in thanking her opponent and reaching out to his coalition. Nice work. She's not a great speaker, but delivered tonight.

 

Solid close, clearly a stronger convention than last week for whatever that's worth. Couple bumpy moments, but really good overall... vs last week's debacle. Be interesting to see how much of a post convention bump happens.

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The new primary rules in California have caused an interesting turn-about in that fewer Californians are likely to be voting for Senate this year than before. The rules, for those who are unaware, were changed to make all primary participants join together and the top two of the total are the only ones allowed on the ballot. This means that Republicans have an extremely low chance of ever running for national Senate and all third parties are completely out. California was quite hard to gain access to before, now it is cementing its reputation.*

The new rule was created based on a belief that it would push people to the center on political issues - perhaps a good intention for all those are worth. But realistically it means that a single political party can avoid any party disunity and focus on joint attacks against second party participants. Republicans will no longer have a Primary as they can't risk splitting the vote at all. It also means that the Dems in California get to treat the actual election as a Primary without any concern about losing popularity before facing off against a Republican, Libertarian, Green, or other such opponent because they have essentially been banned. 

 

*Perhaps having a Trust-Buster would be good again. ^^

Edit: A Reason Article.
 

Soar. 

 

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RPG Net is discussing the leak and the consensus is that there is nothing there other than the usual stuff you would hear around the water cooler. Additionally they don't trust Wikileaks or the fact the Russians all of sudden sent this out in the world

CES 

It is the kind of water cooler talk you would hear in any campaign hq - but these are from the DNC.  The supposedly neutral arbiter whose own bylaws claim to give everyone in the party equal representation.  Of course, that gets into the 'Sanders isn't a real Democrat, he's an outsider' meme.

 

Here's a specific example- a reporter from WSJ asks for the private correspondence between Sanders and Wasserman-Schultz, and the DNC Communications Director coughs it up with the inference this is some kind of payback to the Sanders camp.

 

From:MirandaL@dnc.org

To: laura.meckler@wsj.com, PaustenbachM@dnc.org

Date: 2016-05-06 13:25 Subject:

RE: can you send me the letter Sanders sent the DNC?

OFF THE RECORD, You didn’t get this from me. They didn’t send it to us before planting the story. We’re operating in good faith.

https://berniesanders.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Sanders-DNC-Committee-Letter-5.6.16.pdf

[sigDems]<http://www.democrats.org/>Luis Miranda, Communications Director Democratic National Committee 202-***-****– MirandaL@dnc.org<mailto:MirandaL@dnc.org> – @MiraLuisDC<https://www.twitter.com/MiraLuisDC&gt;

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I think she needs to stay away from making fun of him.  In the debates, she needs to go 3 routes.  1.  Hit him on his 'so-called business success' and emasculate him as someone who can 'fix' the economy.  2.  Most importantly, hit him on his knowledge base.  He has proven repeatedly that his world socio-economic and political knowledge is woefully inadequate.  Even on things that are easily accessible current events (like his Brexit Scotland gaff).  3.  Finally, press him on HOW he's going to fix things.  Make him talk specific policy issues and stop letting him get by with his 'slick used car salesman' handwaving statements, "I'll just sit down with people and make deals."  He doesn't want details and minutiae, heck I don't even think he wants to really govern 24-7 like a President has to do.

 

These things will draw independents and undecideds to her side.  Perhaps they won't agree with all her policies, but it will show that Trump is completely unfit to be a small-town mayor let alone POTUS.

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2 is flatly unconstitutional on its face, since it's religious discrimination. It would have to be redesigned to simply delay admission long enough for background checks.

#2 is doable if you frame it that immigration from specific countries where terrorism activity is currently hot is suspended. We have a list of countries associated with terrorism where immigration from those countries is currently heavily scrutinized. Just go off that list on a case by case basis.

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Here's a specific example- a reporter from WSJ asks for the private correspondence between Sanders and Wasserman-Schultz, and the DNC Communications Director coughs it up with the inference this is some kind of payback to the Sanders camp.

 

From:MirandaL@dnc.org

To: laura.meckler@wsj.com, PaustenbachM@dnc.org

Date: 2016-05-06 13:25 Subject:

RE: can you send me the letter Sanders sent the DNC?

OFF THE RECORD, You didn’t get this from me. They didn’t send it to us before planting the story. We’re operating in good faith.

https://berniesanders.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Sanders-DNC-Committee-Letter-5.6.16.pdf

[sigDems]<http://www.democrats.org/>Luis Miranda, Communications Director Democratic National Committee 202-***-****– MirandaL@dnc.org<mailto:MirandaL@dnc.org> – @MiraLuisDC<https://www.twitter.com/MiraLuisDC&gt;

 

This is great example of how contentious the relationship is between the DNC and the Sanders' campaign but a total nonexample of the DNC leaning on the media.

 

Go into the letter that Bernie Sanders sent to Debbie Wasserman Schultz.  You will see that is dated May 6th just like email that MirandaL is sending to Laura Meckler over at the WSJ.  So the DNC is sending letter the very same day that they received, but you can tell by context that Laura Meckler had already been asking for a copy of the letter.  So, yes, the Sanders' campaign contacted the WSJ about the letter of complaint to the DNC before they even sent it.

 

The Sanders' campaign has put the  DNC in the situation of being questioned by the media about about a complaint that they haven't even gotten a chance to read much less consider or respond to.  Now in the absence of context I would consider this a rather d***ish move on the part of Sanders campaign, except at this this point it is May 6th, 2016 and there is tons of context and history by this point in the game.  Given the history between the groups, I am not going assume that the Sanders' camp aggressive, call the media first and then lodge your complaint was necessarily an unwarranted action.

 

Still unwarranted or not, the move was a bit of a stunt, and my impression is that MirandaL, whoever she is, was annoyed by the move.  So she made an off the record comment to the WSJ reporter to maybe let her know this and also to explain why it had taken so to get her a copy of the letter.  

 

Sorry, unless it is a bribe or a threat, making an off the record comment to a reporter is no more collusion with the media or leaning on the media than writing a letter to editor.  Also, seeing as Sanders' campaign has enlisted the media (in this case the WSJ) to pressure the DNC, the DNC has a right to make there own case to the media and defend their own actions.  

 

This is just some tiff-taffing between the Sanders camp and the DNC and has nothing to do with HRC.  If you want to prove that the DNC was working with the media to lop-side the playingfield in the Democratic primary, you need to find emails which show the DNC pushing negative stories about Senator Sander or killing positive stories about him, or emails that show the DNC promoting positive stories about Secretary Clinton and failing to do the same for Bernie Sanders.

 

Those are the sorts of emails that need to be found to make your case.  There are 20 thousand emails; if there is a smoking gun it is probably in there somewhere ... and if there isn't a gun then there probably wasn't a shooting.  Really, does it make sense that the DNC could pressure/bribe all the media bodies you say they did and have none of them turn around make a story out of it?  "Hey, Debbie Wasserman Schultz just offered me a bunch of stuff if I would ignore Sanders and focus on Clinton!  I'm totally not going to make front page article about the meeting we just had!"  Does that sound like the world you live it?

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Or one did happen and they don't want to bring it up. Or maybe their lizard overlords are just rubbish with press releases. Or maybe their server is in A51 and can't access it now. Can we return to non conspiracy theory time?

 

Soar.

That appears a pretty unlikely scenario, given that the appearance of collusion between Trump and Russia is getting heavy unfavorable media coverage (and will undoubtedly continue to get that as they are offering no actual evidence to counter the piles of linkages, including quotes from his family members about their funding by Russian oligarchs). This at least looks terrible, and HRC shows every sign of hammering him with it (which honestly is just common sense at this point).

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