Speaking Of Emails...

[Guinevere]

I have never seen, nor expected that there was, a requirement that individuals working for the party have no opinion and never act on that opinion nor express it.

Can anyone show me such a rule?

If there isn't then this would be nothing more than an opportunity to change leaders for a different motive entirely.

One part of getting nominated is to earn the support of the party leadership. Admitted that Bernie was sailing against a heavy wind trying to get the support of a party he had spurned for 40 years.


Yrs,
Rubato

There is a time and a place for questioning and challenging. It is most certainly not on the floor of the party convention, in front of a national audience, when the party (for whom you are a delegate) is trying to put on its best face in hopes of kicking off a strong fall election season.

As I've said to these people, vote your conscience, but do not blame me, or HRC, or the party if Donald Trump is elected President. You have a brain and a heart, its up to you how you use them.

[Guinevere]

-- they are largely white and very privileged ...

A condition about which you can speak with personal authority.


Yrs,
Rubato

Yes I'm white, even counting my not-bad-for-July tan. But I do not live in the tony Boston suburbs I was referencing. I specifically chose a more blue collar/mixed community to make my home. Beach notwithstanding, of course.

As for privileged, query whether any woman can ever be considered privileged. It's tough both in my profession and in politics too -- unless you are in a financial stratosphere for which I do not come close to qualifying. I paid for much of my undergraduate education, all of my law school, work my ass off, and do not have the addition of a spouse or significant family wealth to contribute to my financial security.

Do I live a better life than 90% of America? Absolutely, and I've never taken that for granted.

[Guinevere]

I'm signing up online today to join the on-the-ground movement here in my corner of MA. I suppose it's not a terribly important contribution in this state, but it's all I got to give.

Your corner, outside of the urban centers, is one of the reddest parts of the state. Check out the 2012 presidential and senate election results, town by town, on Boston.com. So yes, study those maps and then get out in those towns. Door knock, make calls, be persuasive. In some of those towns the differential isn't much. Go make a difference.

[Long Run]

Tangent rant. The use of the term "privileged" is back-firing and turning off people who most definitely do not feel privileged. The fact that a person may be treated decently is not a privilege, even if there are others who are treated poorly in similar situations. The problem isn't that some people are treated okay while others are treated badly; the problem is some people are treated badly. Assigning the term like "privilege" to describe this situation is not just inaccurate, it is also causing the target audience to get their backs up. The term should be reserved for those who are actually privileged -- given a right they didn't earn, an immunity from consequences others must face, a special benefit, or favored status. Even at the convention, where attendees are all select, the vast majority earned their way there by working tirelessly over many years, so it would be incorrect to even call most of them the privileged.

[rubato]

I have never seen, nor expected that there was, a requirement that individuals working for the party have no opinion and never act on that opinion nor express it.

Can anyone show me such a rule?

If there isn't then this would be nothing more than an opportunity to change leaders for a different motive entirely.

One part of getting nominated is to earn the support of the party leadership. Admitted that Bernie was sailing against a heavy wind trying to get the support of a party he had spurned for 40 years.


Yrs,
Rubato

There is a time and a place for questioning and challenging. It is most certainly not on the floor of the party convention, in front of a national audience, when the party (for whom you are a delegate) is trying to put on its best face in hopes of kicking off a strong fall election season.

As I've said to these people, vote your conscience, but do not blame me, or HRC, or the party if Donald Trump is elected President. You have a brain and a heart, its up to you how you use them.

I was referring to the phony Email scandal not the Bernie clans bad temper. I agree about the latter and I think said so often recently.

Yrs,
Rubato

[rubato]

Tangent rant. The use of the term "privileged" is back-firing and turning off people who most definitely do not feel privileged. The fact that a person may be treated decently is not a privilege, even if there are others who are treated poorly in similar situations. The problem isn't that some people are treated okay while others are treated badly; the problem is some people are treated badly. Assigning the term like "privilege" to describe this situation is not just inaccurate, it is also causing the target audience to get their backs up. The term should be reserved for those who are actually privileged -- given a right they didn't earn, an immunity from consequences others must face, a special benefit, or favored status. Even at the convention, where attendees are all select, the vast majority earned their way there by working tirelessly over many years, so it would be incorrect to even call most of them the privileged.

Anyone who is white and born into affluence, the top 10% certainly, maybe the top 20%, (with caveats for the differences in wealth vs income), is privileged. We have grown up in circumstances profoundly different from everyone whose family knew uncertainty and fear, we grew up surrounded by educated people and books and went to better schools and never questioned that it was our birthright to go to a good university and join our parents, aunts and uncles in the professions. We were born with a huge advantage. We were born on the fifty yard marker of a 100 yard race.

It is the beginning of wisdom to understand this fact.

Now that I am stirred up. People wine like a dry wheel bearing about how unfair affirmative action is but never make a peep about how legacy admissions are even more unfair.



Yrs,rubato

[Long Run]

[quote="rubato"
Anyone who is white and born into affluence, the top 10% certainly, maybe the top 20%, (with caveats for the differences in wealth vs income), is privileged.[/quote]

So, even under your definition, at least 80% to 90% of whites are not privileged, which is getting to the point. And yes, legacy admissions would be a privilege -- earning a spot that was not earned or receiving a special benefit based on birth -- and in fact would be one example of an actual privilege rather than the vague attribution of privilege that has become common.

[Scooter]

And what you are not getting, or choosing not to get, is that there is some privilege that accrues just by virtue of being white. And yes, a white person being "treated decently" does constitute privilege when a black person in the same circumstances would not get decent treatment.

[Lord Jim]

There is a time and a place for questioning and challenging. It is most certainly not on the floor of the party convention, in front of a national audience, when the party (for whom you are a delegate) is trying to put on its best face in hopes of kicking off a strong fall election season.

The level of sheer ignorance as to what this whole thing is about, and why they are there, that I've heard expressed by some of the Bernie Bros today, (and I've had MSNBC on, so presumably they're not going out of their way to locate the most absolutely clueless people they can find...) is staggering to the point of hilarity...

One young woman was indignant at the fact that "all the speakers last night were for Hillary"...

A guy who identified himself as one of the Opening Prayer booers, when asked if he didn't think that was "rude", replied: "I think it was rude that Hillary Clinton was mentioned in the prayer"...



I get the distinct impression that some of these people are so clueless about what's going on here, that they believe that Bern might still get the nomination... ("Why were all the speakers promoting Hillary? Shouldn't some of them have been attacking her and speaking for Bernie?")



Earth To Bernie Bros:

National Conventions, 101:

1.Your candidate lost. ( He knows it, that's why he's endorsing Clinton, and trying to get you to STFU)

2.Hillary Clinton has a majority of the delegate votes. That was determined through the nominating process. That makes her the nominee. That also make this "her" convention...

3.There's no such thing at a national convention as equal air time between speakers who want to support the nominee, and those who want to oppose her, and argue in favor of the person who lost....

Sorry, it just doesn't work that way...

4.The whole purpose of a major party national convention, when the nominee has the delegates for the nomination prior to the beginning of the convention (which has been almost all of them in modern times) is to provide an opportunity for that party to present basically an "infomercial" showcasing what it has to offer, and presenting a display of unity for the electorate going into the general election to make its case against the opposition...


Apparently a lot of the Bernie Bros never got the syllabus ...

[BoSoxGal]

I've been watching the same coverage and I'm very disheartened. Who knew how clueless political activists were about the basics of the political process? Does nobody take Civics in public school anymore? Have these folks never watched a prior convention?

I agree with what Howard Dean said on Morning Joe today; the leaked emails from DWS and others were really bad form, the party mouthpiece should appear to be unbiased in the process.

That being said, the emails aren't why Bernie lost. Bernie lost because so many of his supporters were independents who couldn't vote in the primaries, or people who were too clueless to get registered in time to vote for him in the primaries. I don't buy the 'stolen election' narrative - and Bernie is, I guess, to blame for promoting it.

[Lord Jim]

The main reason Sanders lost is because he was never able to break through with minority voters, (particularly African Americans)

The highest percentage of African American voters he ever got in a primary was 27% in Michigan, and in most states he was much lower...

He got 23% overall...

He belittled Hillary's lopsided victories in southern states, trying to imply they were more "conservative"...

Overall their electorates are, but not in Democratic primaries...

For example, Sanders got shellacked in the South Carolina primary, (73-26 percent) not because the Democratic primary there was full of conservative "Dixiecrats"...

But because while African Americans represent 28% of the overall state population, they represented 53% of the Demo primary vote, and he got just 16% of that vote (lower than Obama got against Hillary in 2008)

If Sanders had managed to get his voter support among African American Democratic primary voters up even into the 35-40 per cent range, there's a very good chance he would be making the nomination acceptance speech Thursday night...

[rubato]

Bernie lost because he only had one thing to talk about and no idea how to achieve it.

Bernie lost because he has failed to do the hard work of talking with and understanding the problems of a democratic voters and thought he could jump into the party and ignore most of it.

He was never a national-caliber politician. He has no,record of coalition- building.

Yrs,
Rubato

[MajGenl.Meade]

I don't think Bernie would like coalition-building. Probably more like "alternative-energition-building"

It was fun to hear Hillary's response to the direction question as to whether in her opinion the Democratic National Committee should favor one candidate over another before and during primary elections.

“Again, I don’t have any information about this, so I can’t answer specifically,”

Perhaps she should have answered the details of the question which called for no knowledge and no comment whatsoever on any specific instance but instead asked for a principled response.

As usual.............. none came forth.

[Guinevere]

Perhaps you should do some actual factual research about HRC instead of mindlessly regurgitating the Republican party line. Maybe you'd actually learn something new about a woman who has been, as Bill said last night, a private citizen engaged in public service her entire life. Who has fought for the rights of women and children her entire life. Or would you really rather just play into the hand of Donald Trump.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Assuming that you are addressing me, what has that to do with Hillary's refusal to answer a plain question? But thanks for the gratuitous insults.

In this particular question, she wasn't being asked to agree that the DNC (not the Convention, of course) had done anything wrong. She wasn't being asked to make any judgement about the alleged favoritism. She wasn't being asked to comment on the emails. (She'd already deflected those questions and I don't have a problem with those responses, mealy-mouthed as they were).

She was asked if it would be wrong for a National Committee to favor one candidate and work against another?

It's a simple question to which the answer is "Yes. That wouldn't be in the spirit of the Democratic party". But not Hillary. Nope. Obfuscation is the order of the day.

I watched the entire Bill Clinton speech last night. It was a very good speech indeed.

[RayThom]

... It's a simple question to which the answer is "Yes. That wouldn't be in the spirit of the Democratic party". But not Hillary. Nope. Obfuscation is the order of the day.

That's exactly how I view Hillary. She's so exasperating. She is in a hole yet she keeps on digging. It's her election to lose and she's doing her damnedest to do just that.

Voting the "top ballot" in November may be the toughest and most distasteful vote I'm going to cast in my entire political life. I'm still not sure if I'm going to vote for any presidential candidate. However, if I do nothing else -- at least -- I'm voting the "bottom ballot." I can't allow my indecision at the top ruin the chances of those at the bottom. They deserve better.

[rubato]

Anyone who is white and born into affluence, the top 10% certainly, maybe the top 20%, (with caveats for the differences in wealth vs income), is privileged.

So, even under your definition, at least 80% to 90% of whites are not privileged, which is getting to the point. And yes, legacy admissions would be a privilege -- earning a spot that was not earned or receiving a special benefit based on birth -- and in fact would be one example of an actual privilege rather than the vague attribution of privilege that has become common.

No. I said the group I defined certainly was privileged. I did not say that all else certainly are not. But compared to certain minorities whites are all relatively privileged. They are not presumed to be terrorists, illegal immigrants, thieves, drug addicts, sexually promiscuous, violent or irresponsible every time they walk outdoors and when they are admitted to a college there is not a presumption they are not there by merit.

If Reagans "welfare queen driving a Cadillac" was white the honesty of his statement (which was a lie) would have been properly questioned. Because she was portrayed as black it was immediately accepted as fact.

That is white privilege, the presumption of innocence. It shapes lives.



Yrs,
Rubato