Hillary Clinton Throws the First Punch of the General Election

By Frank Rich, New York Magazine

01 August 16

 

Most weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. Today: Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, Trump’s Putin comments, and Tim Kaine.

ccepting the Democratic nomination last night, Hillary Clinton noted that, in her life of public service, “the service part has always come easier … than the public part.” Did her speech show you anything about her that you hadn’t been expecting?

A little. This was about as good as it is going to get with a Hillary Clinton speech. There was no expectation that she could match the tough acts she followed — Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, Joe Biden — and she didn’t. But she was confident and at ease, not always a given for her in public appearances, and she did two things very well. First, she rendered the meaning of her role as potentially the first female president in powerful strokes — in terms of the nation’s history, in terms of concrete policies she would advance, and in terms of her own personal history. (Her mother’s hard-knock childhood is not the one you expect to hear from a politician who exudes middle-class suburbia.) Second, she stood up with scorn, wit, and no-holds-barred verbal fisticuffs to Donald Trump. The Trump section of her speech makes you long for the debates, not least because she indicated that one of her implicit goals is to provoke him into losing his cool onstage. Never in the history of presidential politics in the age of television have there been two major-party contenders so antithetical in every way, from their worldviews to their intellects to their psyches to their rhetorical styles to, of course, their genders. What voter would not watch?

The speech also reflected just how much an impact Bernie Sanders has had since his movement caught fire. Clinton, who at her worse equivocates on tough issues or dodges them altogether, took unequivocally progressive stands on causes that Sanders advanced in the primary, and even sounded somewhat convincing railing against the one-percenters in her own donor camp. None of this is likely to win over any conservative voters, but one would hope it helps energize her party’s base. If only she had had an editor! Clinton was right to mock Trump for going on for 70-odd minutes. But then she went on for nearly as long (if not as oddly). Her speech wasn’t quite as amorphous as a State of the Union laundry list, but it was shapeless, overstuffed with policy details at times, and lurched from one topic to the next with no particular dramatic logic. An opportunity was lost when no one stepped in to knit the whole thing together and structure it into a taut, say, 40 minutes.

Then again, perhaps it doesn’t matter. Trump supporters were not going to be persuaded by whatever speech she gave. Maybe those Democrats who are left cold by Clinton — a minority of Democrats, to be sure, but many of them young and every one of them needed — will feel more inclined to rally around her now. Maybe a few moderate Republicans — and there are only a few, most of them employed as talking heads on MSNBC — will decide they’re with her, too. There’s no way of knowing until we start to see some polls after this entire week settles in with the electorate.

Despite some halfhearted backpedaling, Trump’s invitation to Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails and his comments about NATO and Crimea have renewed speculation of his ties to Russian money. How damaging could this be for his campaign?

Listening to Trump invite Vladimir Putin to commit espionage and muscle into an American election, I thought, for a moment anyway, that this might be the final straw. Trump not only turns out to be the Manchurian candidate, but unlike his fictional prototype, he’s not even trying to hide his treasonous plot to aid “our No. 1 geopolitical foe” (as the previous GOP presidential nominee called Russia only four years ago). But what was I thinking? It’s quite possible that this incident won’t damage his campaign whatsoever. His faithful will remain so — it’s just Donald being politically incorrect Donald, they explain — and he may even attract a few more crazies to the fold; after all, he did get a bounce after delivering a rage-filled convention speech widely booed by the civilized world.

That said, a few other points. First, Saturday Night Live owes an apology to Sarah Palin: It turns out that she was not the most ignorant observer of Putin’s Russia to be elevated to a national ticket by the Republican Party in this century. Second, Harry Reid, though a rabid partisan, has a point when he says that he “would suggest to the intelligence agencies” that  “if you’re forced to brief this guy, don’t tell him anything, just fake it, because this man is dangerous.” Trump would blurt out or tweet anything that he felt could advance his own ambitions, the country be damned.

Third, where are GOP leaders as their presidential candidate enters into collusion with Putin? Mike Pence distanced himself a little from Trump’s remarks, but Mitch McConnell expressed only polite disagreement, and Reince Priebus (true to form) remained silent. Paul Ryan released a cowardly statement that trashed Putin but not Trump. You have to wonder if the Speaker of the House, often touted as the heart and soul of his party by conservatives, may go down in history as the foremost fool of our time.

The convention also served as the big introduction of Tim Kaine, whom Clinton chose to the dismay of Sanders supporters. What does he bring to her campaign?

I am firmly of the belief that a veep, no matter who, brings little to any campaign — if you are talking about actual votes, and the final tally of the Electoral College. But the running mates do tell us a lot about the presidential candidates who pick them. JFK (choosing LBJ) was a calculating political strategist. LBJ (choosing Hubert Humphrey) was an autocrat looking for an errand boy. In choosing Kaine, Clinton, following the example of her husband, brands herself a pragmatist: She has a partner who could actually govern if need be, and who shares her centrist liberalism. He boasts a 100 percent rating from Planned Parenthood and a grade of F from the NRA, but he did until last week support trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (as did Clinton before Sanders forced her to flip). My own opinion of Kaine is high. Anyone who knows Virginia politics knows that he has been as forceful a progressive as imaginable for a politician who entered public life in Richmond in the mid-1990s. To Sanders dead-enders who view him as the Antichrist, I say I’m with Sarah Silverman: “You’re being ridiculous.”

It’s also worth a moment to note a historical footnote to Kaine’s candidacy added by the lineage of his wife, Anne Holton. Holton has had her own distinguished career in public service (most recently as state secretary of education) in Virginia. Her father, Linwood Holton, was Virginia’s Republican governor in the early 1970s. In a famous incident at the time, he responded to court-ordered desegregation not with George Wallace–style defiance but by enrolling his daughters in a historically black public school near the Governor’s Mansion in Richmond. This was a remarkable stand to take in the former capital of the Confederacy — where the previous governor, Mills Godwin, had been a forceful advocate for “massive resistance” to Brown v. Board of Education —  but it was consistent with the Grand Old Party of Lincoln. Nonetheless, Holton was soon marginalized by the Nixon-Agnew administration, which was deaccessioning Lincoln to embrace the Strom Thurmonds and Mills Godwins in pursuit of its southern strategy of exploiting white resentment of the civil-rights movement. That strategy has now reached its apotheosis, and possibly its apocalypse, with Trump. Imagine if the Republican Party had remained true to its Lincoln-esque roots rather than sever them in the Goldwater-Nixon era: It’s not inconceivable that Linwood Holton’s daughter or son-in-law might have landed on its ticket this year.

10 Reasons Why #DemExit Is Serious: Getting Rid of Debbie Wasserman Schultz Is Not Enough

By Sophia A. McClennen, Salon

31 July 16

 

The DNC canned its chair, but it has done little to address the grave concerns raised by its members

hortly after Bernie Sanders publicly endorsed Hillary Clinton a new hashtag trended on Twitter: #DemExit.  The hashtag offered Sanders supporters a chance to vent their frustrations with the Democratic Party and with the sense that their candidate had been pressured into an endorsement.  Rather than reach out to these disaffected voters, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) ignored them. Understood within the larger narrative that Sanders supporters were just whining brats who refused to concede and move on, #DemExit was dismissed as just more sour milk.

But now that the latest leak of DNC emails proves that Sanders supporters have a legitimate right to feel cheated, #DemExit increasingly seems like an appropriate response to a rigged system.

The new leak shows that the DNC never took the Sanders campaign seriously, even when he was winning state after state. Rather than recognize that Sanders was attracting new voters to the party, members of the DNC chose to mock them and close ranks around Clinton.

Here are 10 reasons why the #DemExit movement has a valid reason to want nothing to do with the DNC.  Having DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz resign is not enough for #DemExit supporters because their concerns run throughout the ranks of the DNC. Until party leaders take these concerns seriously they will have to spend their convention watching potential voters jump ship.

1.     Superdelegates

It is important to recognize that frustrations over party politics are not uniquely tied to the email leaks. The frustration over the superdelegate system is one clear example that distrust of the DNC goes deeper. The fact that the party even has superdelegates is a sign of its anti-democratic, pro-oligarchy stance. As Branko Marcetic of In These Times reports the superdelegate system was created specifically to challenge the will of voters. According to Marcetic, “When a Sanders supporter criticized superdelegate Howard Dean for sticking with Clinton despite Sanders’ landslide victory in Vermont, Dean tweeted back: “Superdelegates don’t represent the people.”

While there have been new negotiations to adjust the role of superdelegates, these concessions still give too much power to the party elite.

In addition, the fact that Clinton superdelegates were regularly reported by the media in her delegate tally contributed to the sense that Sanders couldn’t win.  So it was not just the existence of the superdelegates; it was the way they were covered by the corporate media that pissed off Sanders supporters. Any party with a superdelegate system should be prepared to alienate voters.  This time it worked.

2.     The Debate Schedule

The DNC created a debate schedule designed to make it hard for candidates to challenge Clinton’s status as the “presumptive” nominee.  Debates were held on weekends, at times that conflicted with other events, and were generally slotted to attract fewer viewers. From the start, well before it was clear that Sanders was gaining momentum, folks were already complaining that the debate schedule was slanted towards Clinton. According to a piece in The National Review from November some Democrats thought it was no accident the DNC scheduled a debate in Iowa on the night of a big Iowa Hawkeyes game.  The next two debates were also scheduled for less viewer heavy weekend slots.

The drama over the debate schedule got worse as the DNC refused to add more debates to give Sanders a chance to continue to build momentum.  As The Intercept reports the DNC laughed at the idea of adding another debate prior to the California primary, even though Fox News offered to host one.  Fox News wrote that, “the race is still contested, and given that you sanctioned a final trio of debates, the last of which has not yet been held, we believe a final debate would be an excellent opportunity for the candidates to, as you said when you announced these debates, ‘share Democrats’ vision for the country.’”  There never was a California debate set up. Not on Fox News or any other venue.

3.     Campaign finance

Back in April the Sanders campaign questioned “serious apparent violations” of campaign finance laws under a joint fundraising deal between Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.  The Sanders camp alleged that the joint fundraising agreement offered Clinton a chance to “launder” money through the DNC.  “While the use of joint fundraising agreements has existed for some time — it is unprecedented for the DNC to allow a joint committee to be exploited to the benefit of one candidate in the midst of a contested nominating contest,” said Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ campaign manager.

Politico reported that legal experts gave conflicting views on whether the practice constituted a violation of campaign finance law.  But whether or not it was legal was not the only point.  Larry Noble, the general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, who served for 13 years as general counsel at the Federal Election Commission, stated that “It clearly goes against what was intended for the joint fundraising committees.”  Given the already significant war chest Clinton had to run her campaign it is not surprising that Sanders supporters would find this news disturbing.

4.     Refusal to Address Claims of Election Fraud

According to a piece from the Observer on calls in California to have the DNC investigate election fraud, “Voter tampering has been frequently cited in California, with many alleging their party registration was changed without their consent. In Riverside County, district attorney Mike Hestrin confirmed voters’ party affiliations were changed without their knowledge.” And that was just one part of the story from California.

The primary elections were rife with claims of election fraud. From the purging of voter rolls (Brooklyn) to cutting poll locations (Arizona, Rhode Island, Puerto Rico), to the debacle of the California primary, there were numerous situations where the DNC could and should have called for an investigation. Despite the fact that in many cases it was Democratic voters that were directly affected, the DNC made no move to support voters’ claims of election fraud.

5.     The Democratic Party Platform

The recent fights over the DNC platform reveal a real lack of support for progressive policy, especially on key economic issues.  As Marcetic reported for In These Times “there’s no denying that the platform compromises on certain core progressive values.”  While some suggested that the new platform was a “win” for Sanders, in the end the platform submits to corporate will on many issues.

Committee delegates selected by Clinton and Wasserman Schultz voted down several measures dear to progressives’ hearts: “amendments advocating single-payer health care and a $15 minimum wage indexed to inflation, several proposals to halt climate change, language criticizing Israeli ‘occupation’ of Palestine and an amendment explicitly opposing the TPP trade agreement.” As Marcetic shows, delegates to the committee with corporate ties were among the most avid in promoting pro-business policy completely out of step with the sort of progressive values that once separated Democrats from Republicans. Unsurprisingly, those very same delegates were the ones connected to Clinton and Wasserman Schultz.

6.     Documented Attempts to Discredit / Dismiss Sanders

As if the previous issues were not evidence enough to justify the #DemExit movement, the Guccifer 2.0 leaks now offer Sanders supporters copious examples of ways that the DNC simply did not respect the Sanders campaign.  It is important to note that Wasserman Schultz was not alone in this general attitude. Even more disturbing, we have no examples of any DNC staffer suggesting that Sanders deserved a better shake than he was getting.  Some of the most egregious examples can be found here.

7.     DNC Collusion with Media

The corporate media was no ally to the Sanders campaign. With AP calling the primary for Clinton before California, New Mexico, New Jersey, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota were set to vote, many Sanders’ supporters felt betrayed by the press. As Bill Boyarsky reports for Truthdig, “The story was not just a scoop. It fed the hostility and cynicism of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ fervent supporters.”

The Guccifer 2.0 leaks also reveal a disturbing pattern of collusion between the media and the DNC to support Clinton and not Sanders.  Luis Miranda, the national communications director for the DNC, communicated with reporters from both Politico and the Wall Street Journal in efforts to discredit Sanders. In one email thread, Miranda told Politico he would “point out… some of the issues” with Sen. Sanders’ DNC committee appointments, but only “off the record.”  Miranda also helped craft “talking points”  to be used by the Clinton campaign in response to the Hillary Victory Fund’s money laundering allegations referenced above.

DNC Press Secretary Mark Paustenbach also vetted a Politico story by reporter Ken Vogel before it was sent to editors:  “Vogel gave me his story ahead of time/before it goes to his editors as long as I didn’t share it,” Paustenbach wrote to Miranda. “Let me know if you see anything that’s missing and I’ll push back.”

And then there are the messages that show how Wasserman Schultz pressured MSNBC after it criticized her “unfair” treatment of Sanders.

8.     False Claims of Neutrality

Perhaps one of the most enervating features of the story is the fact that the leaked documents counter Wasserman Schultz’s claims that the DNC was neutral.  There simply is no evidence of neutrality at all–only evidence of bias. It makes moments like Wasserman Schultz’s interview with “The Daily Show” host Trevor Noah where he asked her to respond to allegations that she has been cock-blocking Sanders seem like an orchestrated cover-up.

Clinton now says that Wasserman Schultz will serve as honorary chair of her campaign’s 50-state program to help elect Democrats around the country only seems to confirm a relationship of biased cronyism. The fact that Clinton still calls her a “longtime friend” and is not calling her out for her mistakes further fans the #DemExit fire.

9.     Failure to Protect Donor Information

The Guccifer 2.0 leak reveals a lot of the shenanigans inside the DNC, but it shouldn’t be overlooked that it also shows that they didn’t use necessary precautions to protect donors’ information.  As Vox reports “the leaked emails suggest that the group was somewhat careless in handling donors’ private information.”

In one example an email contained an attached image with a picture of a $150,000 check. “Emailing checks like this is a bad idea because [it] allows anyone to withdraw money from anyone else’s account with only the routing information printed on every check.” The dump included a ton of donor information — more than enough to create some real identity theft risks.  If the sloppiness reminds you of using a private email server to communicate classified information, then you are not alone.

10.  The DNC Has Not Taken the Leaks Seriously

Much in the same way Clinton blew off her own email scandal, we basically have crickets from the DNC and party leaders. The failure to take responsibility or reach out to disaffected supporters has created a real blowback where voters who backed Sanders are irate.  Now many supporters just think the party is corrupt– and they have point.

The Wasserman Schultz resignation does nothing to correct an election that many supporters feel was rigged. And it does nothing to hold Wassermann Schultz accountable.

Meanwhile a class action lawsuit is forming that is looking into allegations of fraud. It contends, among other things, that the bias of the DNC means that Sanders supporters basically threw their money away when they supported his campaign in good faith.

There is much in the news about the possibility that the hacks were supported by Russia.  And while that is of serious concern, it really isn’t the point. It’s like blaming your girlfriend when she reads your flirty text messages.  If there are no communications to worry about, then there is no story.   Freaking out over the identity of the “hacker” is a great way to cover when you have gotten busted. The issue of who uncovered these messages is less important than the fact that the messages exist and they make the DNC look really bad. Rather than worry about Russian hacks, the DNC should worry about its integrity.

Today the polling for a potential Donald Trump win is increasingly frightening.  Even Michael Moore is predicting a Trump win.  While there are a variety of forces that are working together to advance the Trump campaign, the DNC’s actions are certainly not helping. If Trump wins in November, the DNC will certainly bear a good portion of the blame.