Last night at the convention went better than I had feared. At least, little of the rancor was noticeable on the teevee.
Later today will come the roll call vote to nominate Clinton. Maybe. CNN reports,
The Sanders campaign is asking the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign to allow the Vermont senator to help deliver the formal nomination — a symbolic gesture that would allow the majority of Sanders’ delegates to be tallied in the convention while also showing that Sanders is behind Clinton.Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said Tuesday that all sides have agreed to let Vermont offer up Clinton’s nomination by unanimous consent but he would not say whether Sanders would be the superdelegate to propose her nomination.
If “unanimous consent” means they’d skip the roll call, IMO that would be a huge mistake. The die-hards still think the vote might magically favor Sanders. The votes need to be public, or else they’re going to forever suspect they were cheated of a victory. And that would be true even if Sanders makes the nomination.
Vice President Joe Biden, who was doing a walkthrough of the Wells Fargo Arena Tuesday morning, said that Democrats need to “show a little class” to Sanders supporters who are still stinging from his loss.
“We have to show a little class and let them be frustrated for a while,” Biden told CNN. “It’s OK.”
I so wish Biden had run. I think he’d be the nominee now, and most people would be okay with that.
We have a seriously difficult thing ahead of us, and I don’t mean just keeping Donald Trump out of the White House. Elect Hillary Clinton, yes, as she’s pretty much what we’re stuck with. But the DNC still needs a thorough flushing out, and having her in the White House is going to make that more difficult. I don’t see how that can be done without hurting her administration, frankly, but that’s how it’s got to be.
If Biden and run and been nominated, we’d be hearing now about his vote for the Iraq war and his “senator from MBNA” baggage. Oh and the stupid plagiarism thing would be generating reams of both-sides-do-it nonsense.
Clinton was substantially to Biden’s left when they were both in the senate; she was ranked as the tenth-most liberal senator and he was the 33rd.
(Incidentally that “tenth-most-liberal” slot is now occupied by Bernie Sanders.)
I would happily vote for either one of them but I don’t understand why anyone assumes Biden would be doing better than she is now.
There’s good Hillary and bad Hillary, and in my view, they take about 50-50 turns behind the wheel. However, she’s the only thing standing between this country and complete collapse of the values we thought America stood for. So, go Hillary. I think Bernie has done himself proud by using his primary performance as leverage to extract substantive concessions on the platform and (I gather) the rules, while trying to bring his people around to HRC. Biden is right too, give them a little time; the same thing happened with Hillary’s people in 2008. I hope Hillary gives them heartfelt shout-outs in her speech Thursday night but, seeing as she hired DWS for her campaign, she seems a bit tone-deaf, or at least stubborn.
Well, count me as proud that we just nominated the first female candidate of a major party. I am putting the primary rancor behind me now and moving forward. The delegates who walked out are just making an ugly show of themselves st this point. IT’s clear Bernie wants to work with a Democratic president, and I want to be a part of seeing that happen.
Why don’t I read more on these hacked DNC emails? This is a big deal they link Trump
and Putin. And now Trump is getting intelligence briefings. God help us.
I read somewhere a while back that Western banks no longer loaned to tRUMP. So, I guess he went to Vlad’s plutocrats for some mad-money.
If true, this is not just unprecedented, this should disqualify him from the candidacy. But his Trumpeteers won’t care. They want a strong leader, like Putin. And think tRUMP will be that!
The Evangilcals support tRUMP. And the anti-Russian hard-lines now do too.
So much for any consistency among conservatives.
I’m all in now for Hillary.
To elect tRUMP would be unthinkable.
Bruce K: “,she’s the only thing standing between this country and complete collapse of the values we thought America stood for”
That’s what it comes down to. The Dems are not perfect, but they have values. The ONLY thing the Republicans value is the Koch dollars that come raining down on them.
Hillary is getting intelligence briefings too; and some of them are about how Russian intelligence leaked the emails to Trump.
Trump said the Russians should look at Clinton’s private server. When they were giving out brains, maybe he shouldn’t have asked for “homogenized”.
I simply try to remind myself that politicians have never been the ones I really wanted, and that to get anything done you had to work with the way less than perfect ones. So once again we will have to quench our thirst from if not an empty cup, one which will probably be less than adequately full but better than the salty diuretic alternative.
Enough of this seriousness. We have a chance to have the first first dude. So that has to be some kind of a male (is it still glass?) ceiling. I expect a tour of the soon to be installed man cave in the White House. Again another first. The fashionistas can have a heyday talking about what Bill wore when giving the tour. Just guessing what he will chose to wear for this big first occasion is helping me adjust to what I have always had to adjust to when dealing with politics and politicians. I’m still a bit grumpy though.
“The die-hards still think the vote might magically favor Sanders. The votes need to be public, or else they’re going to forever suspect they were cheated of a victory.”
No, people aren’t that stupid (although concerns about electoral fraud remain an open issue). But in spite of Bernie’s avowal that he would “support the eventual nominee”, the Sanders contingent expected a show of resistance, or at the least, reluctance. Instead, Bernie seems totally committed to sucking up, including reciting a litany of lies about who and what Hillary is, as well as cutting short or trying to suppress any public display from his delegates. All without any consultation or even explanation other than “we’ve got to beat Trump”. This isn’t what a people’s movement or a “revolution” looks like.
Most have refrained from criticizing Bernie’s reluctance to directly challenge Hillary or Obama, the opacity of his campaign, and his failure to address electoral irregularities. Most still trust him and credit him with doing a lot of good, but it nonetheless feels as if Sanders is now spitting in the faces of his most dedicated supporters. I do wonder what they expected would result.
the DNC still needs a thorough flushing out, and having her in the White House is going to make that more difficult.
Yes, this. It’s one of the reasons for thinking we might be better off suffering through four years of Trump. If one is serious about reforming the Democrats, then reinforcing the prestige and patronage of the neoliberal wing is not going to be helpful.
“No, people aren’t that stupid (although concerns about electoral fraud remain an open issue).” Sorry, but people are that stupid. I run into them all the time.
How blithely some people consign us suffering through 4 years of tRUMP.
Who’s to say that we, or anyone, will actually survive? That thin-skinned narcissistic maniac will have the nuclear codes.
And if tRUMP wins, that probably means that the GOP keeps Congress. Yeah, nothing can go wrong there, amirite?
I’m on SSDI, so I may be directly affected, as will others. You know that this latest iteration of conservatives don’t want to conserve anything. they want to blow shit up that they’ve wanted to for decades.
Welfare.
Medicare.
Medicaid.
Social Security.
S-Chip.
Etc…
GONE! Or “privatized.”
What about repercussions for women, children, and minorities?
Some people could survive, even thrive, under 4-8 years of tRUMP/Pence.
I’m not one of them.
Not many of us are…
Tom_b:
When they were giving out brains, Trump thought they said ‘trains’, so he asked for the loco.
When they were giving out brains, Trump thought they said ‘grains’, so he asked for the nuts.
These day many people seem to prefer audacity over smarts for their leadership, even if it’s greedy, corrupt and stupid. If you got the author of Trump’s greatest literary work “The Art of The Dealâ€s Tony Schwartz, on a debate stage with Trump, one armed with good intelligence and credible credentials, and the other obviously crazy (but a ‘tough guy’ with crazy tough talk), who’d win? Even if Tony could logically prove that his opponent was loco nuts, I’d think many would still think him the inferior. Why is this?
“GONE! Or “privatized.‒
Way back when the concept of privatizing came into vogue, I thought that it was a formula for oligarchy. I was a callow young man, but, nothing has changed my mind. Add to that the possibility of a president with mob connections and connections to the Russian oligarchs, if the scuttlebutt is true, and it could well be true. In that case, a Trump presidency would be far worse than anyone could imagine.
Now, striking a cooler and more phlegmatic frame of mind. Trump would still be a disaster for women (and the men who love them), for the planet, for the cause of world peace, the whole magilla!
The first four years would just be the start of a long, long period of suffering. As with Reagan and Dubya, a Trump administration would be the gift that keeps on giving.
@cundgulag — You’ve got SSDI? Lucky bugger! Now me, due to my habit of falling into the cracks, it’s been three decades since I had any access to medical care. Every damn day is a terror of possible death or destitution. Fuck incrementalism. But never mind that.
Seems a lot of people are so distracted by shiny objects — or at the moment ORANGE HITLER!!! — that they forgot to remember that it was “Democrats” like Hillary who laid the foundations for and enabled a lot of the right wing’s slash and burn crusade. Let me count the ways… no, I won’t waste the time. Anyway, unlike some, I’m not always sure I’m right. But I’m definitely fed up to the gills with short term, lesser evil, tribal “thinking”. Shutting up now, I’m tired of it.
@maha — No getting away from human foolishness. I only think you’re mistaken about this particular instance.