The DNC power vacuum

Read this account of the DNC from Donna Brazile. Bottom line: no one was minding the store at the DNC between 2012 and 2015. Obama’s consultants had drained it dry and he left the organization $25 million in debt. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was in charge and she was doing a shitty job with fundraising.

When Clinton’s campaign found out about it, she chipped in $10 million of her own money, put the DNC on a strict budget and signed a campaign fundraising deal with it to keep it afloat with her campaign taking a cut as if she were an incumbent president. It was highly unusual but probably necessary.

Donna also looked for proof that the primaries were rigged against Bernie. They weren’t.

Bernie lost, fair and square.

Soooo, there’s that.

You’d think that someone with as much control as Hillary had would make sure to lock Bernie out- just like Obama’s friends in the DNC locked Hillary out in 2008. But she didn’t.

As to whether the deal she made with the DNC was unethical, I dunno. She was technically and officially, the ONLY DEMOCRAT in the primaries. Bernie wouldn’t join the party. Make of that what you will but if you’re not going to join the club, you shouldn’t expect to share the spoils.

Also, Donna Brazile is partially responsible for what happened to the DNC and the anger of the “old coalition” that voted Trump into power. Dumping the working class and the south was part of her and Obama’s strategy for getting elected.

Maybe she should keep a low profile.

Just sayin’.

Ayayay!

So much going on in the last 24 hours, it’s hard to know where to start.

How about how Rupert Murdoch and company at the Wall Street Journal and Fox News are gang banging America. Jennifer Rubin at WaPo laments how the Wall Street Journal editorial page, always out on the edge, has now completely abandoned any notion of principled conservatism in service to Trump. It’s recent editorial in favor of firing Mueller was breathtaking in its capitulation to the mob. That should alarm us because it’s not the White working class that reads the WSJ.

While Fox News never had a credible domain like the WSJ’s news division had, the WSJ had retained its respectability before the Murdoch’s bought it. Says Rubin:

The Wall Street Journal editorial page is a different matter, however. The move from grudging defense of a Trump presidency to full-blown, Fox-like rationalization has been ongoing since Trump won the nomination. This week’s double-hitter was met on social media from liberals and conservatives alike with a mix of horror and sadness. “Just when you think you’ve lost your capacity for shock, you read this [op-ed from Rivkin and Casey] + WSJ unsigned editorial calling for Mueller’s resignation,” tweeted former Journal opinion writer and editor Bari Weiss.

The Journal editorial page was long thought to be the crown jewel of fiscal conservatism — a staunch defender of open markets, legal immigration and economic freedom. Internationally, it was anti-communist and supportive of U.S. leadership in the world.

Jay Rosen of New York University tells me via email, “From my perspective the Oct. 25 editorial was an important event because it combines so effectively with this development, in which the Journal reporters were told to stand out by their greater willingness to give Trump the benefit of the doubt — greater, that is, than the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, Politico, Bloomberg and others in their peer group.” He continues, “The implicit appeal is not to impersonal and timeless standards of veracity but to an ideological position that, according to the newsroom editors, the others guys have taken while the Journal does not.” He argues, “This is an attempt to give intellectual respectability within the news tribe to ‘the enemy of the people’ attacks. The editors were saying to their reporters: Okay, maybe not enemies of the people, but they’re acting like enemies of Trump! We don’t do that.” He sees a cumulative effect at work. “The news staff and the editorial pages do operate more independently than people assume, but it’s the combined effect we should look at,” Rosen says. “The news side gives him the benefit of doubt, the editorial pages endorse an extreme position in which Mueller cannot fairly investigate. The signal to what used to be called establishment Republicans is: There are no institutionalists among us any longer; it’s tribalism all the way down.”

In this case, Tribalism starts at the top as well.

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Hillary Clinton was on the Daily Show last night and explains why we all need to be more vigilant about our news sources and why she’s not going away:

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Susan Simpson, one of the most thorough lawyers I’ve ever read, and Preet Bharara weigh in on Trump’s defense of the constitution with respect to the Uzbeki who ran people over on Tuesday in NYC:

Some things are worth spending money and time on. Our justice system has to remain one of our Crown Jewels to the rest of the world.

Extreme vetting, elimination of due process and a sped up execution will do nothing to deter the ideological extremists who are already in this country. They’re already prepared to die for their cause.

Everybody who is peeing their pants over terrorism on soft targets should calm their tits already. Deterrence depends on anti-terrorism programs already in place. If you want to have a better chance of not being killed in a terrorism attack, your time is better spent pressuring your congressperson to reject Trump’s defunding of anti-terrorism programs like the one he wants to eliminate in NYC.

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More mellow music from Zero 7: