Yes, Bernie Sanders did that and it got him 13 million voters, not counting
the ones that were blocked from voting for him and the votes that were
stolen from him, the uncounted 2 million California votes for example. And
it got him poll figures which shoed him beating Trump. Just think what it
would have gotten him if the media had covered him fairly, and from the
start and if the DNC hadn't been plotting against him. And he did what he
was able to accomplish, starting with almost nothing and with all of those
barriers. People are hungry for someone who will speak truthfully to them
about issues that concern them. But Sanders became frightened and he didn't
want to risk continuing to tell the truth at the convention, so the trust
and hope of many of the people who supported him has been damaged.
Miriam
________________________________
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Alice Dampman
Humel
Sent: Saturday, July 30, 2016 3:56 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Miriam Vieni
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: You Go to War With the Hillary Clinton You
Have
Bernie came closest to doing that, and look where it got him?
On Jul 30, 2016, at 3:29 PM, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
So once again it comes down to a vote for the lessor fo two evils.
If
we are to prevail over Donald Trump, it is Hillary Clinton.
It would be so refreshing to have a presidential campaign in which
at
least one of the candidates moved to higher ground and showcased
positive plans for rebuilding the many social programs that have
been
falling into neglect. Instead of being told that a Donald Trump
presidency would be the worst thing to ever befall Americans, why
not
give voters some positive stuff as an enticement to back Clinton.
How
about it, Hillary? Can you outline the steps you will take to bring
about the increase of a national wage minimum of at least $15 per
hour?
What plan do you have, and how can we support your efforts in
removing
student debts and bringing about "free" education for All students?
How can we work together to bring an end to private prisons and the
"inmate slave labor" that is lining the pockets of Privateers?
What are your plans, and how can we become involved in rebuilding
our
public education, including the building of quality facilities?
What are you planning to do, and where do we come in, to create a
Green environment, bringing to an end the death grip of the Oil
Cartel.
See what I mean, Hillary? The list is endless, thanks to the
neglect
over the last 36 years. You could put together the most positive
campaign, never having to sound as if you are talking down to us,
telling us over and over just how horrible Donald Trump would be.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/29/16, S. Kashdan <skashdan@xxxxxxx> wrote:
You Go to War With the Hillary Clinton You Have
She may not be an inspirational candidate, but her job now
is to persuade
voters that she's the last best hope against Trump.
By David Corn
Mother Jones, Friday, July 29, 2016 12:15 AM EDT
http://www.motherjones.com/print/310376
Hillary Clinton's convention message: She's good enough to
beat Trump
She may not be an inspirational candidate, but her job now
is to persuade
voters she's the last best hope against the mogul.
When Bill Clinton spoke to the Democratic convention on
Tuesday night, he
warmly recalled the time in 1985 when Hillary Clinton
learned about a
preschool program in Israel that taught low-income mothers
how to become the
first teachers for their children and then introduced it in
Arkansas. When
Joe Biden was at the podium, he declared, "Hillary
understood that for
years, millions of people went to bed staring at the ceiling
thinking, 'Oh
my God, what if I get breast cancer or he has a heart
attack? I will lose
everything. What will we do then?'"
Tim Kaine on Wednesday night pointed out that Clinton had
fought "to get
health insurance for 8 million low-income children when she
was first lady."
He added, "When you want to know something about the
character of somebody
in public life, look to see if they have a passion that
began long before
they were in office, and that they have consistently held it
throughout
their career." And President Barack Obama, in a rip-roaring
stem-winder,
asserted, "Hillary's still got the tenacity that she had as
a young woman
working at the Children's Defense Fund, going door to door
to ultimately
make sure kids with disabilities could get a quality
education."
With Hillary Clinton's disapproval ratings nearly as high as
Donald Trump's
record-setting numbers, the message of the Democratic
gathering in
Philadelphia this week has been simple: She is better than
you think,
whether you're a Republican predisposed to dislike a
Democrat but now
concerned about Donald Trump or a Bernie Sanders supporter
who views Hillary
Clinton as the flag carrier for a corrupt corporatist elite.
Bill Clinton
even acknowledged that his wife, thanks to her detractors,
has become a
"cartoon" for many. He added, "Cartoons are two-dimensional.
They're easy to
absorb. Life in the world is complicated."
And so is Hillary Clinton. She is a onetime former McGovern
Democrat who
voted to let George W. Bush launch the Iraq War. She did
help create a
health insurance program for millions of low-income children
in the 1990s
but also supported welfare reform that progressive social
policy experts
decried. She has denounced big-money politics and called for
overturning
Citizens United but pocketed personal and campaign funds
from Goldman Sachs
and other Wall Street interests. She has resolutely stood up
to false
charges from her say-anything foes regarding the tragic
Benghazi attack, but
she did screw up with the emails. She can be highly
competent and also
possess tremendous blind spots. She knows policy and
campaigns awkwardly.
The Clinton White House years were marked by her
unsuccessful but
well-intentioned effort to achieve national health
insurance, her husband's
fight to beat back draconian GOP cuts in Medicare, Medicaid,
environmental
and education funding, and assorted controversies, some real
(her cattle
futures trading, last-minute pardons, the Lewinsky affair)
and some trumped
up (Travelgate, Filegate, Vince Foster's death). She has
long supported
progressive causes (abortion rights, affordable child care,
LGBT rights,
family leave, immigration reform, women's rights, gun
safety, climate
change) but was a partner in her husband's ideological
triangulation and,
more recently, has been less than steady in opposing the
proposed TPP trade
deal. It's no wonder that one leitmotif of the Dems' week in
Philadelphia
was the difficulty many Sanders delegates have coming to
terms with Clinton
as the Democratic nominee.
As the convention managers and leaders of the Clinton
campaign pushed a
message of party unity in celebration of the first woman to
win a major
party's nomination--and Sen. Bernie Sanders joined in by
declaring in his
prime-time speech that it was essential to support Clinton
and that she
would make an "outstanding" president--a large chunk of
Sanders delegates
noted they were not ready for her. Though the Sanders
campaign had achieved
so much more than past within-the-party insurgencies (Jesse
Jackson in 1984
and 1988, Jerry Brown in 1992) by winning significant
victories during the
party platform and rules deliberations, many Sanders
delegates during the
week focused on grievances and slights: the leaked
Democratic National
Committee emails that showed (no shocker) that some
Democratic staffers were
not Sanders fans; the Clinton campaign's embrace of Debbie
Wasserman Schultz
after she resigned as party chairman; the convention
managers preventing [1]
a prominent Sanders supporter from speaking from the stage.
Rather than
celebrate their triumphs, many Sanders delegates groused
repeatedly that the
Clinton campaign had not reached out to them. They openly
rejected Sanders'
instruction to refrain from protests during the convention
proceedings and
to embrace Clinton in the crusade against Trump.
Throughout the week, numerous Sanders delegates said, "I'm
not there yet."
They insisted it was still up to Clinton, whom some
dismissed as a
"neoliberal hawk" and phony progressive, to win them over
and to convince
them she would stick to her opposition to the TPP (the
policy issue that
most engaged Sanders delegates). They voiced disappointment
that Clinton had
not adopted the Sanders position on fracking, single-payer
Medicare for all,
and Middle East policy.
Norman Solomon, a Sanders delegate and coordinator of the
Bernie Delegates
Network (which is not affiliated with the Sanders campaign),
complained that
the convention was full of "cheerleading for war." Chuck
Pennacchio, a
Sanders delegate from Pennsylvania, warned that Sanders
delegates were not
content to "hand the ball" to Clinton. He added, "Clinton
and her surrogates
need to get out in the field and say [to Sanders
supporters], 'I really want
to hear you.' And that has not happened." He griped, "When I
talk to the
Hillary people, they say, 'Get over yourself.'"
Older Sanders delegates routinely noted that the millennials
who had boarded
the Bernie Express as volunteers and delegates needed more
time to process
their defeat and that they had to be courted by Clinton. A
senior Sanders
strategist insisted that Clinton had to accept the
responsibility of
engaging with this group via texts, tweets, and videos.
"There is a lot of
mistrust among our young Bernie voters about how the process
was conducted,"
said Donna Smith, the executive director of Progressive
Democrats of America
and a Sanders advocate. "To think young people would make a
pivot in four
days is not very realistic...It is not a given that people
will hold their
nose and vote for her." On the last night, many
not-there-yet Sanders
delegates attended the convention wearing yellow T-shirts
emblazoned with
the slogan "Enough is enough."
It was unclear how many Sanders backers were in such a dark
place. Ten
percent? Half? More? It did seem that some of the
independent senator's
supporters would never accept Clinton and that despite
Sanders own
statements many of his ardent followers had not absorbed the
message that
their insurgency had racked up impressive gains. After
listening to several
Sanders delegates say that Clinton was not addressing their
concerns, Tony
Russomanno, a Clinton delegate from California, wondered if
the Sanders
die-hards could ever be satisfied and deal with the reality
that Clinton had
won the nomination. Sanders "people are conflating being
listened to to
getting their own way," he said with a sigh.
Whether or not energizing Sanders-ites is a top priority for
the Clinton
camp--and it's open to debate whether it's more important
for her to excite
the progressive base or to draw in moderates (or to do both)
in order to bag
the few swing states necessary for victory--she did reach
out to
independents and Republicans. Throughout the convention,
speakers and videos
made the case to moderate Rs and independents (see Michael
Bloomberg's
speech [2]) that in a world where Trump could end up in the
White House and
in command of nuclear weapons, Clinton is a just fine if not
perfect
alternative.
With her acceptance speech, Clinton sought to depict herself
as an advocate
of compromise, steady leadership, and across-the-aisle
conversation. She
came across as a workhorse. She noted, "I sweat the details
of policies."
The level of lead in drinking water. The cost of
prescription drugs. The
number of mental health facilities in a state. She confessed
she might not
be the best politician: "The service part has always come
easier to me than
the public part...I get it: Some people don't know what to
make of me." And
she went the Full Bernie, declaring she was prepared to
collaborate with the
Sanders crowd to advance the "progressive" platform the two
campaigns
developed together. Addressing Sanders supporters, she
declared, "I heard
you. Your cause is our cause." She touched all the Sanders
issues: economic
inequality, big-money corruption, Wall Street greed, climate
change, unfair
trade deals, expanding Social Security, tuition-free
college, and more. It
was an outright play for their support.
Clinton slyly slammed Trump, casting him as the candidate of
fear, division,
and insult. She poked at his habit of stiffing
small-business contractors.
"Donald Trump says he wants to make America great again,"
she jabbed. "He
could start by actually making things in America." She
zeroed in on his
temperament: "Imagine him in the Oval Office, facing a real
crisis...A man
you can bait with a tweet is not a man you can trust with
nuclear weapons."
Her overall theme was "stronger together." And she is trying
to build a
non-Trump coalition that stretches from Sanders progressives
to Reaganesque
Republicans who fear Trump. She juxtaposed her desire for
communal politics
with Trump's politics of the ego. It was an effective
speech, and Clinton
succeeded in illustrating the stark choice this presidential
election
presents.
Within the convention hall, there were plenty of Democrats
excited to be led
by Clinton, inspired by her work and stances over the years,
and thrilled by
the historic nature of the moment. But for many Democrats,
progressives,
independents, and GOPers horrified at the prospect of a
bullying, bigoted,
and erratic celebrity tycoon becoming president--and perhaps
not fully
enthused by Clinton--Clinton has to sell herself as the best
option
available. Hours before her speech, Robby Mook, the Clinton
campaign
manager, acknowledged that some voters are "skeptical" of
Clinton and noted
that she must show them her "core values and core
motivations and her
lifetime of work." In a way, her task in the next three
months is to show
those skeptical voters, in the words of Stuart Smalley, the
Al Franken SNL
character, "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone
it, people like
me." And if some voters feel they are settling by voting for
her, so be it.
Clinton has spent decades in public life, and there won't be
a new Hillary
in the weeks ahead. She is unlikely to become an
inspirational candidate.
She is unlikely to lower dramatically her approval ratings.
She won't become
a progressive hero. She won't become trusted by Republicans
who have long
eyed the Clintons with suspicion. She is, though, the only
chance to stop
Trump's takeover of America--and her job is to persuade
voters that for now
she is indeed the last best hope.
Source URL:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/07/hillary-clinton-dnc-speech-messa
ge
Links:
[1]
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/07/bernie-sanders-delegates-convent
ion-protest-walk-out
[2]
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/07/michael-bloomberg-democrats-foun
d-perfect-foil-donald-trump
