Oh, wow. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard thinks that the Democratic party thinks that she’s people: “Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, a vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, said she was disinvited from the first Democratic presidential primary debate in Nevada after she appeared on television and called for more face-offs.” At least, that’s the only reason that I can think of for her being upset at the way the DNC chastised her for speaking out of turn. Hasn’t anybody explained the rules to Rep. Gabbard yet? Continue reading DNC smacks down DNC vice chair Tusli Gabbard for going off-message on debates.
Tag: democrats
New Hampshire Governor Maggie “I took illegal PAC contributions!” Hassan (D) to run for Senate.
Possibly you may remember the Northern Pass story from last year: in a nutshell, Maggie Hassan’s campaign took forty-five thousand in illegally same-day campaign contributions from three Big Labor unions (SEIU, UFCW, and IBEW). This was generally considered to be at least suspicious, as all three unions want New Hampshire’s proposed Northern Pass transmission line project to go through, while radical environmentalists of course instead want people in New Hampshire to be cold, hungry, and in the dark. Was it a bribe? Nobody knows! Was it illegal? Well…
After the state Republican Party filed a complaint, Attorney General Joe Foster was tasked with deciding whether the $45,000 in union donations to Hassan’s campaign were legal. He decided that a person becomes a candidate at midnight on the day he or she announces. Under that rather creative interpretation, the two $10,000 donations were legal, but the $25,000 contribution was not.
Further complicating the story, the PACs had not registered in New Hampshire, making their donations felonies. Foster ordered the PACs to register, but did not punish them for the violations, which was very lenient of him.
CNN grimly holding a debate chair warm for Joe Biden.
Desperation makes for an awful cologne: “Vice President Biden could qualify to participate in the first Democratic debate even if he did not decide to enter the race until debate day, according to participation criteria released by host organization CNN on Monday.” Jazz Shaw over at Hot Air concentrated on how this position is showing special consideration for Joe Biden, which it totally is. But putting aside the question of why Democratic primary candidates are being treated in a gentler fashion than Republican candidates were*… there’s a question here over just why CNN wants Joe Biden on that stage. Why CNN needs Joe Biden on that stage. Continue reading CNN grimly holding a debate chair warm for Joe Biden.
New York Times confirms The Daily Beast’s ISIS/intelligence scoop.
BOOM goes the dynamite: “A group of intelligence analysts have provided investigators with documents they say show that senior military officers manipulated the conclusions of reports on the war against the Islamic State, according to several government officials, as lawmakers from both parties voiced growing anger that they may have received a distorted picture about the military campaign’s progress.” Government inspectors specifically looking at CENTCOM (United States Central Command), which of course was the subject of a potentially devastating Daily Beast report from last week that alleged that precisely this was going on. Naturally, the New York Times doesn’t want to admit that the original problem arose largely because this administration hates being told things that it doesn’t like to hear, but at least the Times is taking the situation seriously, right? Continue reading New York Times confirms The Daily Beast’s ISIS/intelligence scoop.
DNC nervously refuses to host more debates.
The wagons are being circled: “Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is closing the door on adding more Democratic presidential debates, and said a controversial clause penalizing candidates for participating in unsanctioned debates would stand.” The number will stay at 6, and never mind the complaints from inside the party. No, really, the Democratic leadership is determined to never mind them.
Before we go any further: that Hill article noted that there were two dozen or so primary debates in 2008, which does admittedly sound a bit high. Six, on the hand, is… well, if you weren’t really expecting to have a contested primary then I suppose six would have seemed like plenty. As it stands right now, though, the Democrats are perilously close to having a contested primary despite the fact that their only alternatives to Hillary Clinton are currently Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley. As a former Democrat myself, the idea of that is giving me sympathy heartburn despite the fact that I want to see such a glorious trainwreck happen. Continue reading DNC nervously refuses to host more debates.
The NYT mutters fitfully about Jewish legislator opposition to Iran deal.
(H/T: @NathanWurtzel) The New York Times apparently had one mission: use the word ‘Jewish’ as many times as it took to associate that word with opposition to the Iran deal.
“Jewish?” http://t.co/FeatxcsXTr
— Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) September 10, 2015
Despite the fact that, as the NYT itself noted, more Jewish Democratic legislators support the Iran deal than oppose it. Now, I think that supporting the Iran deal is stupid, on general principles, and general secular principles at that. But since the NYT is determined to drag religion into this whole, dreary mess, I have to ask: just what benefit do Jewish Democrats get from being Democrats? They’re certainly not avoiding becoming the subject of NYT hit pieces!
Rep. Mike Honda (D, CA-17) squirms under allegations he mixed campaign business with House business.
When you do politics, you should always read local newspaper reports whenever possible. They often tell you things that you won’t hear from the national news organizations. Case in point: Mike Honda (D, CA-17). He had a bad week, from a ‘campaign shenanigans’ point of view. This is how The Hill described it:
Shown notes from his district office’s staff retreat, Rep. Michael M. Honda allegedly acknowledged to ethics investigators that what he was seeing was “open to a lot of interpretation, but it doesn’t look good.”
The California Democrat’s former campaign manager presented official staff with a strategy in which district office events would be used to raise money, according to Office of Congressional Ethics documents released Thursday.
This @ShoreDems tweet tells you just how scared the Democrats are getting right now.
This is what hysteria looks like.
This is, in fact, what hysteria spawned by the creeping realization that your party is going to lose the next Presidential election looks like. Normally I wouldn’t bother smacking these people around for it – they don’t have enough followers to be worth my time – but since Hillary Clinton seems so determined to take so many cheap shots this week, it seems reasonable enough to note that the crazy, desperate accusations aren’t a top-down affair. Or at least not just a top-down affair. There are a lot of people in the Democratic party who are suckling from the ‘poisonous rhetoric’ teat right now, and they’re not going to become any saner between now and November 2016. Continue reading This @ShoreDems tweet tells you just how scared the Democrats are getting right now.
Quote of the Day, The Democrats Will Need Another Shellacking First edition.
This is an interesting factoid:
… right now, the Republican presidential bench is much deeper, and younger, than the Democrats’: The average age of the five Democrats already running for president, along with Biden and Gore, is 66 years old. By contrast, the average age of the 17-person Republican presidential field is 57.4 years old.
Continue reading Quote of the Day, The Democrats Will Need Another Shellacking First edition.
What today’s Q-Poll showing Democrats losing in key states does and does not mean.
It is not the beginning of the end; but it the end of the beginning.
You’ve probably read about this Quinnipiac poll already. The short version, for those who haven’t: Biden, Clinton, and Sanders all lose to Bush, Rubio, and Walker in Colorado, Iowa, and Virginia. Virginia is the toughest nut for Republicans, but there isn’t a single combination above where any Democrat leads any Republican. So, Game Over, then?
Hardly. The election’s not tomorrow, and this poll will not reflect the final results except by sheer accident. Never use a poll to predict an election that will not be held for another year. Never. Even if your favored candidate is doing so. But what you can do is look at it and use it to try to get a feel for the current situation – and when I do that here I’m left with three major conclusions: Continue reading What today’s Q-Poll showing Democrats losing in key states does and does not mean.