Plan B Forum

What the Hell Happened in Nevada Last Weekend?

This past weekend’s Democratic state convention in Nevada took an ugly turn when Bernie Sanders supporters reportedly shouted down speakers and threw things when proceedings didn’t go their way. Things got so out of hand at the Las Vegas venue where the event took place that hotel security staff eventually had to clear the room over safety concerns. In the days since, Bernie fans have bombarded the state party chairwoman with death threats, while the state party has responded by accusing Sanders supporters of having a “penchant” for “actual violence” and suggesting they’ll turn violent at this summer’s national convention in Philadelphia.

So, yeah, not exactly a good look for a party hoping to come together later this year to take on Donald Trump in the general election and to make his party look like the chaotic one. Also, while the exact details of what happened at the convention remain in dispute, the whole thing adds to the (not unfounded!) perception that the Democratic Party has rigged the system to favor Hillary Clinton and that there are some rather clear Trump-like undercurrents of misogyny and aggression among Sanders’ most passionate backers.

Facing calls from party leaders to denounce the weekend violence and the threats that followed, Sanders' response on Tuesday was surprisingly defiant. While he condemned “any and all forms of violence,” he dismissed the complaints from Nevada Democrats as “nonsense” and complained that his supporters were the ones that weren’t treated with the “fairness and respect” they deserve. His statement came only hours after Nevada Sen. Harry Reid told reporters that he had spoken to Sanders and was confident that the Vermont senator would try to calm tensions. Instead, Bernie appeared to fan the flames.

Here’s a snippet from his statement that went on to repeat, at length, many of the specific complaints voiced by his supporters over the weekend:

Within the last few days there have been a number of criticisms made against my campaign organization. Party leaders in Nevada, for example, claim that the Sanders campaign has a “penchant for violence.” That is nonsense. Our campaign has held giant rallies all across this country, including in high-crime areas, and there have been zero reports of violence. …

If the Democratic Party is to be successful in November, it is imperative that all state parties treat our campaign supporters with fairness and the respect that they have earned. I am happy to say that has been the case at state conventions in Maine, Alaska, Colorado and Hawaii where good discussions were held and democratic decisions were reached. Unfortunately, that was not the case at the Nevada convention. At that convention the Democratic leadership used its power to prevent a fair and transparent process from taking place.

Saturday’s chaos erupted after the committee tasked with credentialing state delegates ruled roughly 60 Bernie supporters ineligible to be seated at the Nevada convention, at which Team Sanders hoped to narrow—or potentially even reverse—his delegate losses stemming from Clinton’s victory in the state’s February caucus. (The final Nevada delegate count was never going to swing the nomination, but Sanders is hoping to use every delegate he can get to help shape the party platform and secure a prime-time speaking slot.)

According to Bernie’s version of events, Nevada Democratic Chairwoman Roberta Lange relied on a voice vote—as opposed to a roll call vote that may have gone his way—to pass the convention rules, and also refused to consider motions, petitions, and amendments offered up by his supporters. Party officials, meanwhile, maintain that they were operating entirely by the book.

“The rules governing the Democratic Party delegate selection process have been in place for decades and the specific procedures for this cycle were agreed upon in 2014,” DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said in a statement (sounding a lot like her rival chairman on the GOP side), adding that the credentials committee was made up of an equal number of members from both campaigns.

I wasn’t at the Nevada convention and can’t speak to exactly what played out there. But videos taken from the convention hall along with snippets of the phone and text messages later sent to Lange together paint an unflattering picture of pretty much everyone involved—though Bernie supporters came off particularly bad given at least a small slice of them decided to channel their political outrage into actual death threats.

In the videos, Lange can be seen bringing the convention to a close by voice vote and more or less taking her gavel and going home—not exactly the best illustration of a transparent and democratic process. In one such video, though, among the first words out of a Bernie supporter's mouth were, “what a bitch,” while in another they were “fucking bitch.”

Most concerning of all, though, were the threats sent to Lange following the event. Among them were a voicemail that suggested the chairwoman should be “hung in public execution,” and a text message that read, “Hey bitch, loved how you broke the system, we know where you live, where you work, where you eat, where your kids go to school.”

Pretty awful stuff. Now the question is whether the ugliness will still be raging at this summer’s national convention.

Dislike for the Beast runs deep and is very passionate.

wesw wrote:staying the course in the face of repeated failure is the epitome of Einstein s definition of insanity, no?

TPFKA@W wrote:"... There are plenty who dislike her for her actions. ... " .

1. When she was first lady, she murdered White House lawyer Vince Foster and then dumped his body in a park.

2. She drove Vince Foster to commit suicide through her temper tantrums.

3. She was having an affair with Vince Foster.

4. She’s a lesbian.

5. Chelsea isn’t Bill Clinton’s child.

6. She murdered Vince Foster to cover up that she once bought a tract of undeveloped land in Arkansas and lost money.

7. She murdered Vince Foster to cover up her role in firing the White House travel department.

8. After she murdered Vince Foster, she ransacked his office in the middle of the night and stole all the documents proving her guilt.

9. When Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas, she was a partner in the state’s top law firm, and it sometimes did work involving the state government.

10. She once invested in commodities futures on the advice of a friend and made $100,000, proving she’s a crook.

11. She once invested in real estate on the advice of another friend and lost $100,000, also proving she’s a crook.

12. Unnamed and unverifiable sources have told Peggy Noonan things about the Clintons that are simply too terrible to repeat.

13. The personnel murdered at Benghazi make her the first secretary of state to lose overseas personnel to terrorism — apart from Condi Rice, Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, George Schultz, Dean Rusk and some others.

14. Four State Department staff were murdered at Benghazi, compared with only 119 others murdered overseas under every secretary of state combined since World War II.

15. She illegally sent classified emails from her personal server, except that apparently they weren’t classified at the time.

16. She may have cynically wriggled around the email law by “technically” complying with it.

17. She once signed a lucrative book contract when she was a private citizen.

18. Donald Trump says she “should be in jail,” and he’s a serial bankrupt casino developer in Atlantic City, so he should know.

19. Former House Majority Leader Tom Delay says his “law-enforcement sources” tell him she is “about to be indicted” — and if a man once convicted of money laundering and conspiracy doesn’t have good law-enforcement sources, who does?

20. She’s a hard-left radical who wants to break up the nuclear family.

21. She’s a conservative “mousewife” who refused to break up her own family.

22. She’s in favor of single moms.

23. She refused to be a single mom.

24. When she was first lady of Arkansas, she pandered to conservative voters by dyeing her hair.

25. Before that, she totally insulted them by refusing to.

26. She’s a frump.

27. She spends too much money on designer dresses.

28. She has “cankles.”

29. She has a grating voice.

30. She yells into the microphone.

31. She spent 18 years in Arkansas and some of the people she knew turned out to be crazy rednecks and crooks.

32. She’s in the pay of the mafia.

33. She’s in the pay of the Chinese government.

34. She’s in the pay of the Wall Street banks.

35. In order to suppress the billing records from her time at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, she cleverly packed them up and took them to the White House rather than shredding them.

36. When she handed over the documents to public officials, they couldn’t find any evidence she’d committed any crimes, so she must have doctored them.

37. Congress spent tens of millions of dollars and six years investigating her investment in the Whitewater real-estate project, and, while they didn’t actually find anything, they wouldn’t have spent all that money if there weren’t something there.

38. By cleverly hiding all evidence of her crimes in the Whitewater affair, she caused Congress to waste all that taxpayers’ money.

39. When she ran for senator of New York, she was still a fan of the Chicago Cubs.

40. She once said the Clintons were thinking of adopting a child, and they didn’t follow through.

41. She was photographed holding her hand near her mouth during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

42. She’s got brain damage.

43. She’s old.

44. She’s really ambitious and calculating, unlike all the other people running for president.

45. She secretly supported Palestinian terrorists, Puerto Rican terrorists and Guatemalan terrorists.

46. She secretly supported a group that wants to give Maine back to the Indians.

47. She’s a secret follower of “radical prophet” Saul Alinsky.

48. She did her law degree at Yale, and it’s a well-known “socialist finishing school.”

49. When she was young, she did things to build up her résumé rather than just for their own good.

50. When Bill was president, she “allowed” him to keep people waiting.

51. She’s married to a sex addict.

52. She’s an enemy of traditional marriage.

53. She didn’t divorce her husband.

54. His philandering is her fault because she is too strong, and too weak, and too frumpy, and too fat, and too cold.

55. She’s hostile to women who fool around with her husband.

56. A divorced taxi driver in Florida told me that if Hillary is elected president, “women will take over everything.”

57. She insulted Tammy Wynette.

58. When they left the White House, she and Bill bought a big house in New York that they couldn’t afford.

59. She sometimes calls her staff during dinner, even when they’re out at a restaurant.

60. She claimed there was a “vast right-wing conspiracy” against her husband, and it turned out there was nothing but a bunch of tycoons financing private investigators, and some fake think tanks and books and news sites and stuff.

61. When she got married, she didn’t “stay at home and bake cookies.”

62. She supported the Iraq war because she’s a secret foreign-policy conservative.

63. She’s a secret foreign-policy radical with a plan to impose worldwide “radical social experimentation” through the World Bank.

64. She is secretly plotting to let children sue their parents for making them take out the garbage.

65. She looked bored during the Benghazi hearings.

66. Oh, yeah — and she totally has a vagina.

Oh, yeah — and she totally has a vagina.

55. She’s hostile to women who fool around with her husband assaulted.

Lord Jim wrote:

55. She’s hostile to women who fool around with her husband assaulted.

Fixed.

Did James Carville write that list?

Lord Jim wrote:Did James Carville write that list?

Brett Arends is an award-winning financial columnist with many years experience writing about markets, economics and personal finance. He has received an individual award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers for his financial writing, and was part of the Boston Herald team that won two others. He has worked as an analyst at McKinsey & Co., and is a Chartered Financial Consultant. His latest book, "Storm Proof Your Money", was published by John Wiley & Co.

Lord Jim wrote:

55. She’s hostile to women who fool around with her husband assaulted.

Fixed.

And that distinguishes her from 99% of women whose husbands are accused of assaulting women, how, exactly?

"every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed and supported."

I think it's pretty clear that Bill Clinton is a philanderer who was victimized by false accusations driven by political forces, and that those 3 accusers are the liars, not the other way 'round.

In the cases of Willey and Broderick, it's true that its a case of he-said she-said, but it's also true that the available evidence confirms both they and Clinton were present in the places in question at the times the alleged incidents occurred, and in both cases both Willey and Broderick told other people about it immediately after the sexual abuse is supposed to have happened. (Which wasn't true in the case of Anita Hill, btw)

But even he-said she-said is a far cry from the "they should be disbelieved based on the evidence" claim that Hillary made...

And in the case of Jones, what evidence there is indicates that she should be believed not "disbelieved. Jones was able to properly describe "distinguishing marks on the President's penis" (Man, there's a phrase I hope to NEVER see again in the press) which she couldn't possibly have done, if she hadn't uhh, seen "the President's penis"...And like the other two, Jones also told others about it right after it is supposed to have happened.