Democrats: Should You Have A Say In The Nomination Process?

[Zam-Zam]

The reason I ask is that the DNC has some lawyers arguing that maybe your participation isn't all that important.......

DNC: We rigged primaries. So what?

'We could have gone into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate'

......During an April 25 hearing, the DNC argued the case should be dismissed. Judge William J. Zloch, a Reagan-appointed senior federal judge for the United States District Court serving the Southern District of Florida, heard oral arguments pertaining to the DNC’s Motion to Dismiss request on April 28.


DNC lawyers justified the party’s right to select candidates through “back-room” deals and tip the scale for the establishment’s preferred primary candidate.


“f you had a charity where somebody said, ‘Hey, I’m gonna take this money and use it for a specific purpose, X,’ and they pocketed it and stole the money, of course that’s different. But here, where you have a party that’s saying, ‘We’re gonna, you know, choose our standard bearer, and we’re gonna follow these general rules of the road,’ which we are voluntarily deciding, we could have – and we could have voluntarily decided that, ‘Look, we’re gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way,'” DNC attorney Bruce Spiva argued. “That’s not the way it was done. But they could have. And that would have also been their right, and it would drag the court well into party politics, internal party politics to answer those questions.”


But Article 4, Section 5 of the DNC charter states: “The chairperson shall exercise impartiality and evenhandedness between the presidential candidates and campaigns. The chairperson shall be responsible for ensuring that the national officers and staff of the Democratic National Committee maintain impartiality and evenhandedness during the Democratic Party presidential nominating process.”


While the DNC charter explicitly stipulates that the DNC chair and their staff must ensure neutrality in the Democratic Party presidential primaries, it is “a discretionary rule that it didn’t need to adopt to begin with,” Spiva asserted.


Furthermore, the DNC lawyer contended, the words “impartial” and “evenhanded,” used in the DNC charter, are not “self-defining” and can’t be interpreted by a court of law, the DNC lawyer asserted.


Attorneys representing the plaintiffs, Jared Beck and Elizabeth Lee, claimed the argument that the term “impartial” is ambiguous is absurd.......


Complete text: http://www.wnd.com/2017/05/dnc-we-rigged-primaries-so-what/

I'm fairly certain this won't cause even a ripple of discontent among Clinton loyalists. Sanders people, perhaps, will see it a bit differently.

 

[Dawg]

They sure picked the candidate in 2016

 

[worldlymrb]

Democracy is to dangerous for the democrat party I guess.

 

[Bugsy McGurk]

The reason I ask is that the DNC has some lawyers arguing that maybe your participation isn't all that important.......

DNC: We rigged primaries. So what?

'We could have gone into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate'

......During an April 25 hearing, the DNC argued the case should be dismissed. Judge William J. Zloch, a Reagan-appointed senior federal judge for the United States District Court serving the Southern District of Florida, heard oral arguments pertaining to the DNC’s Motion to Dismiss request on April 28.


DNC lawyers justified the party’s right to select candidates through “back-room” deals and tip the scale for the establishment’s preferred primary candidate.


“f you had a charity where somebody said, ‘Hey, I’m gonna take this money and use it for a specific purpose, X,’ and they pocketed it and stole the money, of course that’s different. But here, where you have a party that’s saying, ‘We’re gonna, you know, choose our standard bearer, and we’re gonna follow these general rules of the road,’ which we are voluntarily deciding, we could have – and we could have voluntarily decided that, ‘Look, we’re gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way,'” DNC attorney Bruce Spiva argued. “That’s not the way it was done. But they could have. And that would have also been their right, and it would drag the court well into party politics, internal party politics to answer those questions.”


But Article 4, Section 5 of the DNC charter states: “The chairperson shall exercise impartiality and evenhandedness between the presidential candidates and campaigns. The chairperson shall be responsible for ensuring that the national officers and staff of the Democratic National Committee maintain impartiality and evenhandedness during the Democratic Party presidential nominating process.”


While the DNC charter explicitly stipulates that the DNC chair and their staff must ensure neutrality in the Democratic Party presidential primaries, it is “a discretionary rule that it didn’t need to adopt to begin with,” Spiva asserted.


Furthermore, the DNC lawyer contended, the words “impartial” and “evenhanded,” used in the DNC charter, are not “self-defining” and can’t be interpreted by a court of law, the DNC lawyer asserted.


Attorneys representing the plaintiffs, Jared Beck and Elizabeth Lee, claimed the argument that the term “impartial” is ambiguous is absurd.......


Complete text: http://www.wnd.com/2017/05/dnc-we-rigged-primaries-so-what/

I'm fairly certain this won't cause even a ripple of discontent among Clinton loyalists. Sanders people, perhaps, will see it a bit differently.

We're OK, thanks.

You might think about focusing on Russia's picking of the US president, and your Dear Leader's collusion with that endeavor.

 

[Zam-Zam]

Democracy is to dangerous for the democrat party I guess.

Democrats, in general, seem to prefer that big decisions be made for them by an authoritarian government, so perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that many will be content to have the DNC party bosses pick the nominee sans their input.

 

[Bugsy McGurk]

Democrats, in general, seem to prefer that big decisions be made for them by an authoritarian government, so perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that many will be content to have the DNC party bosses pick the nominee sans their input.

Better our government than the Russian government, no?

;-)

 

[Zam-Zam]

They sure picked the candidate in 2016

Given the results, perhaps they are in need of better decision makers...:>)

I don't know that Sanders would have fared better, but the DNC did somehow find a candidate actually capable of losing a national election to Donald Trump. That is an impressive feat, even for them.

 

[Arkady]

The reason I ask is that the DNC has some lawyers arguing that maybe your participation isn't all that important.......

DNC: We rigged primaries. So what?

'We could have gone into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate'

......During an April 25 hearing, the DNC argued the case should be dismissed. Judge William J. Zloch, a Reagan-appointed senior federal judge for the United States District Court serving the Southern District of Florida, heard oral arguments pertaining to the DNC’s Motion to Dismiss request on April 28.


DNC lawyers justified the party’s right to select candidates through “back-room” deals and tip the scale for the establishment’s preferred primary candidate.


“f you had a charity where somebody said, ‘Hey, I’m gonna take this money and use it for a specific purpose, X,’ and they pocketed it and stole the money, of course that’s different. But here, where you have a party that’s saying, ‘We’re gonna, you know, choose our standard bearer, and we’re gonna follow these general rules of the road,’ which we are voluntarily deciding, we could have – and we could have voluntarily decided that, ‘Look, we’re gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way,'” DNC attorney Bruce Spiva argued. “That’s not the way it was done. But they could have. And that would have also been their right, and it would drag the court well into party politics, internal party politics to answer those questions.”


But Article 4, Section 5 of the DNC charter states: “The chairperson shall exercise impartiality and evenhandedness between the presidential candidates and campaigns. The chairperson shall be responsible for ensuring that the national officers and staff of the Democratic National Committee maintain impartiality and evenhandedness during the Democratic Party presidential nominating process.”


While the DNC charter explicitly stipulates that the DNC chair and their staff must ensure neutrality in the Democratic Party presidential primaries, it is “a discretionary rule that it didn’t need to adopt to begin with,” Spiva asserted.


Furthermore, the DNC lawyer contended, the words “impartial” and “evenhanded,” used in the DNC charter, are not “self-defining” and can’t be interpreted by a court of law, the DNC lawyer asserted.


Attorneys representing the plaintiffs, Jared Beck and Elizabeth Lee, claimed the argument that the term “impartial” is ambiguous is absurd.......


Complete text: http://www.wnd.com/2017/05/dnc-we-rigged-primaries-so-what/

I'm fairly certain this won't cause even a ripple of discontent among Clinton loyalists. Sanders people, perhaps, will see it a bit differently.

I'm a Sanders person, but I can't get terribly worked up about any of this.

Sanders spent a long career refusing to be a Democrat. Then, one day, he decided the Democratic Party should make him their leader and throw all their considerable resources behind him. That was pretty audacious. Understandably, those who'd spent their careers as team players within the party weren't terribly enthused about the idea of making a non-Democrat (and long-time critic of the party) their nominee. It's human nature that they wouldn't have been totally impartial in the process. But what we've seen so far suggests that any efforts they made to put their thumbs on the scale were subtle, and far too inconsequential to have made a difference in what ended up being a run-away victory by Clinton. She ended up getting about 28% more votes than Sanders -- even if a full 20 points of that was attributable to DNC insiders biasing the process, which seems unrealistically large given how little we've seen, that still means she would have won anyway.

I get why Russia, WND, and right-wingers like you want this to be a big story. Driving a wedge into the Democratic Party strengthens Trump's hand, and so you'll gladly pretend you care about minutia in the Democratic primary process. I'm not interested in playing along though. The Democratic voters had a chance to vote on their nominee and they went for Clinton by too big a margin to be attributable entirely to whatever subtle back-room forces the party insiders were exerting on the process. Sanders got a decent shot to make his case, and came up short. He managed to do well enough to inject his ideas forcefully into the public discussion, and that will likely have positive benefits in future years. I can live with that.

For now, I take the simple view that any patriotic American who is fighting against Trump is my ally. I celebrate the efforts of Sanders and Clinton and the efforts of each of their supporters. We need to come together right now. We have too little power in the current arrangement to indulge in wasteful infighting.

 

[marvin martian]

We're OK, thanks.

You might think about focusing on Russia's picking of the US president, and your Dear Leader's collusion with that endeavor.

Your dodge is noted. Any chance you can address the topic of the thread, Dodgeboy?

 

[marvin martian]

I'm a Sanders person, but I can't get terribly worked up about any of this.

Sanders spent a long career refusing to be a Democrat. Then, one day, he decided the Democratic Party should make him their leader and throw all their considerable resources behind him. That was pretty audacious. Understandably, those who'd spent their careers as team players within the party weren't terribly enthused about the idea of making a non-Democrat (and long-time critic of the party) their nominee. It's human nature that they wouldn't have been totally impartial in the process. But what we've seen so far suggests that any efforts they made to put their thumbs on the scale were subtle, and far too inconsequential to have made a difference in what ended up being a run-away victory by Clinton. She ended up getting about 28% more votes than Sanders -- even if a full 20 points of that was attributable to DNC insiders biasing the process, which seems unrealistically large given how little we've seen, that still means she would have won anyway.

I get why Russia, WND, and right-wingers like you want this to be a big story. Driving a wedge into the Democratic Party strengthens Trump's hand, and so you'll gladly pretend you care about minutia in the Democratic primary process. I'm not interested in playing along though. The Democratic voters had a chance to vote on their nominee and they went for Clinton by too big a margin to be attributable entirely to whatever subtle back-room forces the party insiders were exerting on the process. Sanders got a decent shot to make his case, and came up short. He managed to do well enough to inject his ideas forcefully into the public discussion, and that will likely have positive benefits in future years. I can live with that.

For now, I take the simple view that any patriotic American who is fighting against Trump is my ally. I celebrate the efforts of Sanders and Clinton and the efforts of each of their supporters. We need to come together right now. We have too little power in the current arrangement to indulge in wasteful infighting.

Sanders was paid $600,000 to pretend to run for president. It was fight fixing plain and simple, of the type that's been going on for thousands of years. Sanders took a payoff to take a dive in the 5th round.

Now, on to your advocacy for treason. I'm all good and well with you and Hillary Clinton and the other loons calling yourselves "the resistance", but I'm sure you're aware how traitors were put down the last time they tried to overthrow the duly elected government of the United States. Good luck, perhaps you can overwhelm the United States military with your superior brand of sharp sticks.

 

[Bugsy McGurk]

Your dodge is noted. Any chance you can address the topic of the thread, Dodgeboy?

I did.

To repeat - we're OK, thanks.

Again, your concern for Dems is touching, but sane people think you wingers should be focusing on the Russia/Trump alliance.

 

[Arkady]

Sanders was paid $600,000 to pretend to run for president.

That's very obviously not the case. If he was a sham candidate, we'd have expected him to avoid going negative, since he could only harm the ultimate ticket that way. Instead, he went very negative, even as Clinton avoided running even a single attack ad against him. Similarly, if Sanders were a sham candidate, we'd have expected to see him raise as little money as possible, since any money he made not only would require counterbalancing spending from Clinton that would deplete her warchest, but it was also money some of those donors might otherwise have sent her way in the general. Sanders certainly could have gotten away with raising vastly less money without raising any suspicions that he was sandbagging. Sanders raised around $230 million. He could have raised half that and been in line with the Republican losers. Also, obviously, Sanders kept campaigning well after it was clear he had no hope of winning. If it was a fake campaign, he could have gracefully bowed out weeks earlier and nobody would have batted an eye.

This right-wing meme of yours is the kind of thing someone would only assert if he didn't care at all about looking stupid. It's just so clearly contradicted by the real-world evidence. Sanders went "above and beyond" trying to win the nomination. That's not what a fake candidate would do.

I'm all good and well with you and Hillary Clinton and the other loons calling yourselves "the resistance", but I'm sure you're aware how traitors were put down the last time they tried to overthrow the duly elected government of the United States.

There was a resistance against some terrible presidents in the 1850s, especially James Buchanan, who often gets listed as the worst of all time. Yes, I know how that ended. Eventually the people came to their senses and elected a better president, and when the losers in the south didn't have the character to resist through legal means, they started a war on their nation, and had to be put down. Hopefully this time, when we elect a better president, the southern conservatives and racists won't resort to treason again.

 

[Zam-Zam]

I'm a Sanders person, but I can't get terribly worked up about any of this.

Sanders spent a long career refusing to be a Democrat. Then, one day, he decided the Democratic Party should make him their leader and throw all their considerable resources behind him. That was pretty audacious. Understandably, those who'd spent their careers as team players within the party weren't terribly enthused about the idea of making a non-Democrat (and long-time critic of the party) their nominee. It's human nature that they wouldn't have been totally impartial in the process. But what we've seen so far suggests that any efforts they made to put their thumbs on the scale were subtle, and far too inconsequential to have made a difference in what ended up being a run-away victory by Clinton. She ended up getting about 28% more votes than Sanders -- even if a full 20 points of that was attributable to DNC insiders biasing the process, which seems unrealistically large given how little we've seen, that still means she would have won anyway.

I get why Russia, WND, and right-wingers like you want this to be a big story. Driving a wedge into the Democratic Party strengthens Trump's hand, and so you'll gladly pretend you care about minutia in the Democratic primary process. I'm not interested in playing along though. The Democratic voters had a chance to vote on their nominee and they went for Clinton by too big a margin to be attributable entirely to whatever subtle back-room forces the party insiders were exerting on the process. Sanders got a decent shot to make his case, and came up short. He managed to do well enough to inject his ideas forcefully into the public discussion, and that will likely have positive benefits in future years. I can live with that.

For now, I take the simple view that any patriotic American who is fighting against Trump is my ally. I celebrate the efforts of Sanders and Clinton and the efforts of each of their supporters. We need to come together right now. We have too little power in the current arrangement to indulge in wasteful infighting.

A true company man, forever loyal and obediant....

 

[Arkady]

A true company man, forever loyal and obediant....

I'm the furthest thing from a company man, politically. I've never been a member of the Democratic Party, and I backed Sanders in the election. But I'm also not a company man for the GOP, the way you are. So just because some right-wing propagandist at WND tells me to get my knickers in a twist about this, I'm not going to hop to it the way you did. I think independently. You ought to try it sometime.

 

[Zam-Zam]

I'm the furthest thing from a company man, politically. I've never been a member of the Democratic Party, and I backed Sanders in the election. But I'm also not a company man for the GOP, the way you are. So just because some right-wing propagandist at WND tells me to get my knickers in a twist about this, I'm not going to hop to it the way you did. I think independently. You ought to try it sometime.

You perhaps bristle at the thought of being labeled a company man.

It doesn't appear, however, that actually being one bothers you in the least. The DNC argues in open court that they have no obligation to respect your vote, and you're fine with it.

You can rationalize that any way that makes you feel better (and you will), but that's exactly what a company man would do.

 

[as seen on tv]

"we're entitled to steal, because that's how our predecessors did it. the new rules are just window dressing. we can still do whatever we want, and you can't stop us"

 

[Arkady]

You perhaps bristle at the thought of being labeled a company man.

I bristle at all lies. You know perfectly well I'm no company man when it comes to the DNC. You've seen me post often enough to know I attack the Democrats, and sometimes do so in very harsh terms. And you know I backed Sanders, who wasn't exactly the DNC candidate. Calling me a company man may be an appealing lie, from your perspective, but I'm an honest person, so it lacks the same appeal for me.

 

[marvin martian]

That's very obviously not the case. If he was a sham candidate, we'd have expected him to avoid going negative, since he could only harm the ultimate ticket that way. Instead, he went very negative, even as Clinton avoided running even a single attack ad against him. Similarly, if Sanders were a sham candidate, we'd have expected to see him raise as little money as possible, since any money he made not only would require counterbalancing spending from Clinton that would deplete her warchest, but it was also money some of those donors might otherwise have sent her way in the general. Sanders certainly could have gotten away with raising vastly less money without raising any suspicions that he was sandbagging. Sanders raised around $230 million. He could have raised half that and been in line with the Republican losers. Also, obviously, Sanders kept campaigning well after it was clear he had no hope of winning. If it was a fake campaign, he could have gracefully bowed out weeks earlier and nobody would have batted an eye.

This right-wing meme of yours is the kind of thing someone would only assert if he didn't care at all about looking stupid. It's just so clearly contradicted by the real-world evidence. Sanders went "above and beyond" trying to win the nomination. That's not what a fake candidate would do.



There was a resistance against some terrible presidents in the 1850s, especially James Buchanan, who often gets listed as the worst of all time. Yes, I know how that ended. Eventually the people came to their senses and elected a better president, and when the losers in the south didn't have the character to resist through legal means, they started a war on their nation, and had to be put down. Hopefully this time, when we elect a better president, the southern conservatives and racists won't resort to treason again.

I see, so the "resistance" that you, Hillary Clinton, and the other loons profess to be a part of is simply an effort to run a better campaign for 2020. Well, ok then...let your terrorist antifa friends know they can stop burning buildings, pepper spraying college girls, and beating up old people, and instead start canvassing for their favorite old, rich, white Democrat for 2020.

 

[Arkady]

"we're entitled to steal, because that's how our predecessors did it. the new rules are just window dressing. we can still do whatever we want, and you can't stop us"

Is it your view that political parties should be obligated to conduct genuinely democratic selection processes for their nominees?

Perhaps so. However, as a Sanders supporter, that's not the most appealing notion for me. It's worth remembering that Sanders would have been blown out much more badly if the choice of nominee were done democratically, rather than through maneuvering of party insiders. Sanders won nearly all the caucuses --procedures where a fairly small core of hard core Democrats decide the outcome-- while doing much worse in the primaries, where things are decided by tens or hundreds of thousands of rank-and-file voters.

 

[Arkady]

I see, so the "resistance" that you, Hillary Clinton, and the other loons profess to be a part of is simply an effort to run a better campaign for 2020. Well, ok then...let your terrorist antifa friends know they can stop burning buildings, pepper spraying college girls, and beating up old people, and instead start canvassing for their favorite old, rich, white Democrat for 2020.

I have no terrorist antifa friends. What made you think I did?