DNC vs Sanders. Is the DNC right to block Sander's access to DNC voter data?

Oh she'll be a challenge, but she's beatable.

This is from the link you provided. The upshot is somehow just not as ominous and damning of Hillary as you and edgar always suggest.

"Obviously the partisan nature of NGP-VAN, the connections to Hillary Clinton, the Hillary Connection between Hillary and DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Shultz who was Hillary’s prior co-campaign manager, doesn’t prove anything or suggest anything nefarious. It doesn’t, however, rule out the possibility of a conflict of interests either. The Sanders campaign has not retracted their claim that the DNC might not be acting as a neutral third party and the lawsuit is still pending as of now.

Both the Sanders and Clinton campaigns, as well as the DNC, are calling for an independent “audit” of the incident and the records to rule out a wider scandal or a conflict, and also to identify and fix any vulnerabilities in the DNC’s database. This is as it should be, but there is just enough of a bad smell left in the room to require fellow Democratic to maintain their scrutiny to press for even more transparency at the DNC."

Yes. Nothing is inevitable. But the probabilities, as I see them now, look to be highly in her favor.

Especially compared to D Trump.

Yes.

This is such an interesting election. Dangerous as hell, sure, but interesting like no other I've seen. Not a single political writer/analyst right or left that I know of thought Trump would actually run. We all thought this was just the latest gambit to keep his brand in the limelight. His brand is, if you think about it, his ego.

And fewer than nobody imagined he'd rise to the top of the GOP primary polling and fewer than that imagined he stay atop for this long. Everybody was caught off guard.

One might be tempted to think this big surprise will continue through to a nomination and then, to a general election victory. I'll go out on a limb and predict it very definitely will not so continue. He wouldn't win a general. He will be crushed. He is far, far more likely to eviscerate the GOP at the federal level if he's their boy. Which, frankly, is exactly why I hope he's their nominee. Chaos isn't good but that party needs an existential crisis because it has gone insane.

I was once a fiscal conservative republican, but something happened to that party that doesn't resemble what it used to be. I've been an Independent for several decades, and will vote for the individual who best meets my expectations as a good representative of all Americans.
I don't believe any candidate seeking the office fits the bill, but Bernie comes close. I'm not sure about his fiscal conservatism.

I know, Tak. And I'm a Canadian peeking over the fence and doing the Greek chorus thing.

I can cop to being tougher on Hillary than the mainstream media.

That qualifies as the understatement of the year. Bernie is an unfailing supporter of every social welfare program out there, and to my knowledge has made no serious effort to explain how it would all be paid for or what will likely be the effects on the real economic activity that is behind all the taxes he expects to collect.

Given the lamentable history of the 20th century's experiences with Marxist socialism From the Soviet Empire, to China, post colonial Aftrica and various other nations it is truly remarkable, indeed amazing, that these ideas have any appeal at all. Somehow even the continuing example of authoritarian and poor Cuba and the still unfolding economic debacle in Venezuela fails to deter the illusions engendered by the peddlers of all this BS.

Nice try, george, but you're wrong. Almost all, if not all, developed countries provide universal health care. Your mention of Cuba is a throw away claim. You should know better. Canada and most of European countries provide universal health care.

Yes, they do. Even Israel has single payer, like Canada. And most enjoy superior health outcomes as well, and at cheaper cost. Most also have social programs much more generous than what the US offers.

These are all mixed economies which is, of course, what the US is as well. A rather big problem for those who advocate for an elimination or great reduction in US social programs and who declare that elemination of redistributive systems would work magic is the lack of any successful exemplar nation to point to where government provides no such redistribution of wealth. Such nations simply do not exist.

pretty much why the Koch brothers suggested they're willing to sacrifice this election. they want time to rebuild the party their way.

Not only that but the majority of the ten strongest economies of the world have universal health care.

I notice that your view of reality tends to be shaped by your ideology.

From what I can tell, a great many of Bernie Sanders' supporters really can't stand her and this was before this DNC affair. That her campaign and the DNC seem to be in cahoots have rendered a fair number of them apoplectic.

A friend of mine on FB has vowed to vote Republican (even for Trump) if Debbie Wasserman Schultz isn't removed from her position in the party. What was really surprising was the number of people who climbed aboard his post and went so far as to say they would vote GOP if Clinton is the nominee. For the most part, I think this is passionate histrionics, but it's interesting. Hillary and her team play to win and they aren't beyond playing dirty to win. Sanders' supporters tend to see their guy as one of the only honest men in politics (a dubious contention) and if they feel he got dirty treatment from the Clinton machine, they might just not vote (which is almost as good as them voting for the Republican candidate.

Right now I'm somewhat concerned that if Trump doesn't win the nomination (and I don't believe he will) he'll break his vow and run on his own. If that happens I will be desperately hoping that Sanders follows suit.

I stopped making political predictions after Obama won a second term, and now am convinced that anything can happen...including Trump becoming president. I certainly hope he doesn't, but I wouldn't vote for Clinton in opposition to his candidacy.

I've only seen one poll that has Trump beating Clinton in the General Election, so it's not something anyone should take to the bank, but Rubio consistently has. It's not surprising. In her favor is the "First Woman President" baloney, but she's not at all likable and that seems to count highly. I've read all the crap about how in "real life" she is charming and endearing, but in public she comes across as stiff and shrill. When she pulls her accent schtick (black, southern, whatever) I wince so hard I think I might pass out.

There is someone who, if she ran, might cause even me to vote for Clinton and that's Debbie Wasserman Schultz. I am amazed that anyone takes that women seriously and can only imagine that she is where she is in the party because Dems know that she has absolutely no shame and that whenever they need an outrageous lie to be thrown out she will be happy to do so.

Bernie Sanders is a she? LOL

I agree that raising tax rates to close to 90% isn't a serious means, but I think he's serious when he responds to such questions with "raise taxes."



Because these ideas are so inexorably appealing to most Democrats. I'm surprised that, by now, someone hasn't "pointed out" that communism "has never been actually tried." No matter how many examples one can cite of the concept not only failing but being terribly destructive, it remains appealing on a very basic (even childlike) level.

It's "fair!" It just needs the right person to force it on us all.

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Sure. Impossible for that not to be so. We all face this challenge.

Re Sanders' followers, yes, as I said, this is a passionate crowd. But that's in no way uncommon nor is the rhetoric of "I will not vote or vote for the opposition if...".

But there's another element in all this that is critically important to recognize. I gave the example of women who said that if Obama won (or because Obama won) they would vote McCain. I also noted that much of this was actually GOP trolling - as with Clintons4McCain which was set up and pushed by the GOP with lots of appearances of spokeswomen Christi Adkins on Fox. As Wired reported at the time, the GOP had registered the domain name. At that period, I spent about six months digging in to this story, exchanged a number of discussions with Atkins and read through countless Facebook accounts related to this "movement". Adkins have never been a Dem nor had her husband nor this fellow she worked with (name forgotten now). There were a ton of associated groups (eg PUMA) all linked together. If you asked these individuals to list the policy positions held by Hillary they supported, you'd get nothing almost without fail. Though some women voters actually were really pissed at Obama and his team for beating Hillary, the preponderance of what we saw then was oppo activity from the GOP. This was, by the way, the first concentrated attempt to use social media, covertly or deceitfully, to influence consensus that I'm aware of.

This shouldn't surprise. Campaigns work oppo strategies to manipulate voters' minds just as advertising or propaganda does. Try to create doubt, try to encourage disaffection, etc. It is critical to understand that this stuff is going on in an election. In our current situation, that someone like Stone is doing what he's doing, is entirely predictable. It's rat-f*ucking, to use the term popularized by Segretti and buddies and revealed in All The President's Men.


You mentioned something about ideology coloring how we perceive reality. Gallup polling (mentioned earlier) finds her the most admired woman in the world for each of the last seven years http://bit.ly/1NU33lV

Yes. And they have been pretty frighteningly effective. I've maintained a google news alert on those boys for the last five years. I've got another window open right now to the yesterday's Politico piece on their organization http://politi.co/1NU45hL

Yeah. The US right is rather nutty on all this. A few years ago as a sort of experiment, I posted a lot at National Review Online seeing what those folks were thinking and to see if I could engage in fruitful conversations. There were some such exchanges but my god they were rare. Where I advanced the challenge for anyone to identify any nation in what we (for good reason) term "the free world" which operates with capitalist enterprises unfettered by their government and where wealth is not redistributed, there would be no such exemplars identified. What I would get were circular arguments - "freedom means freedom from government so they aren't really free" or I'd get a response asserting that the US at the beginning of the 20th century was the model of such a liberated golden age. When I'd point to things like child labor, lack of workplace health/safety, life expectancy, the Shirtwaist Building Fire, etc, all would be ignored in order to maintain the immovable ideological certainty these folks seemed to need.

That'a a specious argument. Basically you are saying that if a little is good more is certainly better, which of course flys in the face of both logic and innumerable facts about the world we live in. There's a principle in biology called hormesis which describes a fairly general phenomenon involving the biological benefits of small doses of chemicals, metals, or irritants like radiation, which in large doses can be deadly.

Cicerone's argument about the health care policies of the largest economies in the world not only ignores the counter facts in China and India and other large countries, but is essentially the same argument the Inquisition made against Gallileo.

The appetities of would be reformers of mankind for sappy falsehoods and nonsense continues to amaze. Even more amazing are the sophistries used to rationalize them. The example I offered of Cuba is every bit as valid as is that of the ongoing debacle of Venezuela and the sadly cyclical delusions of Argentina.