[Peace-discuss] FW: Don't Cry For Me, DNC: Notes From the Democratic Convention

[David Johnson]

Hey Carl, you are actually named in this article by Jeffrey St. Claire.

 

 

July 26, 2016 

Don
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/26/dont-cry-for-me-dnc-notes-from-the-d
emocratic-convention/> 't Cry For Me, DNC: Notes From the Democratic
Convention

by Jeffrey St. Clair <http://www.counterpunch.org/author/jeffrey-st-clair/>


*	 

Debbie Wasserman Schultz was awful at everything she did except ensure HRC's
nomination. This was not lost on her own delegation in Florida, who shouted
her down this morning. Two hours later she had been removed from her
position as chair of the DNC, banned from the stage at the convention and
rewarded with an obscure position with the Clinton campaign. After Debbie
loses her primary contest to Tim Canova, she'll land some kind of position
with the Clinton administration. So.

Don't cry for me, DNC!
I've still got my jewelry
and part of an oil refinery.
Hillary's going make me an Ambassador
and not to some shithole like El Salvador.
I'm thinking Luxembourg or Monaco
Where I'll be driven around in a pink El Dorado.

Failing that, there's always the Ambassador to Nordstrom's.

+According to MS-DNC, the whole story of the DNC email dump exposing how
Party elites tried to rig the primary elections for HRC is about how Putin
and his hackers are trying to fix the fall election for Trump. How bad do
Democrats hate Wikileaks and Julian Assange? Well, here's Democratic fixer
Bob Beckel on Assange: "The guy ought to be and I'm not for the death
penalty, so if I'm not for the death penalty, there's only one way to do it:
illegally shoot the son of a bitch."

+ Remarkable, Bernie Sanders is getting shouted down by his own delegates
this morning for pushing Hillary & Kaine down their throats!

If the double blows of the DNC email dump and the Kaine pick didn't push
Bernie over the brink, nothing will. He made his Faustian pact and now he is
just another Clinton surrogate.

+ Misogyny, Liberal-style: I think it's unfair that Debbie Wasserman Schultz
is taking all the heat for the DNC email scandal. After all, Obama is the
real leader of the DNC. Debbie is Obama's hand-picked surrogate. Obama
should follow Debbie's lead and cancel his speech tomorrow night. It's only
just.

+ According to a report in the New York Times, the "LOCK HER UP! LOCK HER
UP!!" chant has spread to Philly: "The reaction from Mr. Sanders's
supporters was consistent with the anti-Clinton message delivered by
demonstrators earlier in the day. Some pro-Sanders protesters took a harder
turn on Monday, chanting 'Lock her up' in an echo of the message of the
Republican National Convention a week earlier, fueled by the resignation of
the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee."

+ After a supposedly disastrous, widely ridiculed convention, Trump is now
up 5%. He might well be up 10 after the Democrats finish theirs.They
continue to ignore working class issues and the rising animus toward
interventionist wars at their peril. The fact that it all seems inexplicable
to them will help seal their fate.

+ According to CNN,

"Trump's new edge rests largely on increased support among independents, 43%
of whom said that Trump's convention in Cleveland left them more likely to
back him, while 41% were dissuaded. Pre-convention, independents split 34%
Clinton to 31% Trump, with sizable numbers behind Johnson (22%) and Stein
(10%). Now, 46% say they back Trump, 28% Clinton, 15% Johnson and 4% Stein."

Note that MS-DNC is reporting only a 3% Trump lead, because they stubbornly
ignore the presence of Gary Johnson and Jill Stein. But both of the third
party candidates are drawing more votes from Clinton than from Trump.

+ Nancy Pelosi was booed as she addressed her own California delegation. Who
wants to be the next Democratic power broker to step up to the microphone?
Chuck Schumer, stop hiding behind the curtains, you've never been shy
before!

Michael Yates sent me this note: "Pelosi is a real slimeball. No doubt
Sanders will have good things to say about her."

+ Benediction booed. Barney Frank booed. Marcia Fudge booed. Next? Could
this convention be fun, after all!

+ After waiting three days to apologize to Sanders and the Sandernistas for
rigging the democratic process against his campaign, Democratic leaders now
urging Sandernistas to be "respectful" of the "democratic process!"

+ Sanders in Full Clinton Mode, just texted his delegates to sit back and
take it in silence: "I ask you as a personal courtesy to me to not engage in
any kind of protest on the floor."

Imagine what the scene on the floor would be like had Sanders not endorsed.
What a monumental failure of nerve on his part.

+ Will the Sandernistas have to stop calling themselves Sandernistas?

+ Sanders: "Friends, settle down! Settle down! When I said 'revolution' I
didn't mean a cap-R 'Revolution. It was a METAPHOR!'"

+ How badly did the Clintons misread the mood of their own rapidly-dwindling
base when they picked the pro-TPP Kaine, after knowing that the DNC's emails
had been released. There's stupidity. And there's hubris. She's got massive
quantities of BOTH.

The TPP bait-and-switch is crucial here because it exposes Hillary lied
about her own position and thus confirms everyone's belief in her mendacity.

+ Hillary seems to have spent more time courting Michael Bloomberg than the
Steelworkers.

+ The DNC, with the help of the hired Sanders flacks, just pushed through
the platform on a voice vote, steamrolling effort by the Sandernistas and
Labor to get a floor vote on the TPP.

+ Hillary delegates are holding up signs reading "Love Trumps Hate." Now
can't that be read two entirely different ways?

+ The Democratic Convention is highlighting the drug war. Not eliminating
it, mind you, but extending it to the so-called "opioid epidemic." Will they
call for ending the Afghan War which has accelerated the poppy trade? Will
they go after prescription-pushing Big Pharma, which has been coddled so
tenderly by Tim Kaine? Dream on, Dems. Where's Tipper Gore?

Rules of Engagement for HRC's Drug War: If you take your opioids in pill
form (i.e., white people) you go to therapy, if you use a needle (blacks and
Hispanics) you go to prison. Shoot them only if you see them shooting up.

+ Fascinating interview with Julian Assange on NBC about the DNC email dump.
Assange said the Russian hack of the DNC computers occurred before many of
the emails in this document dump were even written. He said that the DNC's
email system was almost transparent. The system had very little security and
that the emails were there for the taking. He said the RNC system is equally
vulnerable. (Look out Reince Pribus.)

What a triumph for Assange and Wikileaks. The fact that the CIA hasn't been
able to eliminate Wikileaks is a real & tangible sign of hope. You can bet
they'll be near the top of Hillary's hit list, if she's elected.

+ Does Sen. Kristen Gillibrand not know that after college Hillary DID in
fact go to work for "a fancy law firm," called Rose Law, where she toiled,
not on behalf of "the children", but for some of the South's most vicious
corporations and did a good enough job that she was invited to join the
board of Wal-Mart?

+ Listening to Clinton's campaign guru Robbie Mook mewl about possible
Russian meddling in US elections is like listening to Trump whine about
income tax rates, when he apparently pays nothing. Shall we recall HRC's
direct intervention in the Russian elections? Her financing of the
opposition in the Venezuelan elections? Her role in the Honduran coup?
That's essentially the job description of the Sec. of State, isn't it? What
goes around comes around, Hillary. (If that is, in fact, the case.)

+ It's 9 PM in Philly and all is quiet on the eastern front. Has the steam
gone out of the Sandernistas? After a raucous morning, I hope they didn't
spend the afternoon sharing bong hits of DNC Trainwreck or Burlington Kush.
Did they all mellow out? Popping a few Bernie Bennies would have been a
better choice..

+ Sarah "Sandernista" Silverman just slammed Sandernistas as being
"ridiculous." Make her a diplomat in the Clinton State Dept. We'll be going
to war with Grenada again before you know it..

+  Enough with dreary Paul "Way Back Machine" Simon. Bring back, Demi "I
Have a Mental Illness" Lovato.

+ Cory Booker has none of the oratorical gifts of Obama. He's more of a
second rate blues shouter than a true master of political soul.

+ Did Booker flub the line about Hillary has been "paying it forward" her
entire life? Surely he meant she's been "getting paid" forward her entire
life?

* Booker: "Hillary doesn't believe in scapegoating people over their
religion." Did Mrs. Clinton come to this position after or before she fired
Debbie Wasserman Schultz for plotting to scapegoat Sanders over his
religion?

+  Look, there's Bill Clinton lustily applauding Michelle Obama. Recall when
he slandered her husband's campaign for race-baiting. "I think that they
played the race card on me. We now know, from memos from the campaign, that
they planned to do it all along." And, unforgettably, telling Joe Biden: "A
few years ago, this guy would have been carrying our bags.".

+ Michele's got the gift. She understands, as McLuhan said decades ago, that
TV is a cool medium. She's the coolest thing they've got going. Too bad
she's squandering it on someone who led her husband into the Libyan debacle.

+ Once again, Michele invokes HRC's book "It Takes a Village." But as
Secretary of State, Hillary's playbook was "To Drone a Village." My friend
Carl Estabrook (il miglior fabbro) amended this to: "To Take Out a Village."

* Michele's going to take shit tomorrow for saying she "wakes up every
morning in a house built by slaves."

+ Pretty low-wattage speech from Warren. Probably a bad move to put her
after Michele. The Bernie or Bust block has thrown off her rhythm a few
times with the Sandernistas screaming: "We trusted you!" Her heart doesn't
seem to be in her blurbs for HRC and Kaine.

+ Biggest applause line for Warren came when she quoted Trump's line about
the "system being rigged." But the crowd seemed placid and unimpressed.
Warren's encomiums for Hillary on economic justice and trade fell flat, with
the crowd chanting "Goldman Sachs, Goldman Sachs."

+ Sandernistas crying as Bernie takes the stage. Too bad it's not the
Clintons crying. If only Picasso were around to paint Bernie
<http://www.pablopicasso.org/images/paintings/the-weeping-woman.jpg> 's
weeping women.What a strange magnetism he has, especially the appeal to
younger women, who were the backbone of his campaign. Is it a longing for
the lost grandfather? The appeal is almost mystical. Patrick Flatherity
suggested that it was: "a longing for a sincere, strong, open-hearted male,
which is all too rare in popular culture." But look where he led them. Right
into the arms of the Wicked Stepmother.

+ The boos began the moment Bernie began his refrain: "Hillary understands."

+ Bernie's vouching for Hillary, the Secretary of Fracking, on climate
change rang pretty hollow, especially when she doubled-down w/ Tim "Offshore
Drilling" Kaine. What's worse? Someone dismisses the science and supports
the oil, gas and coal industry or someone, like Clinton and Kaine, who
understand the science and still support the fossil fuel industry?

+ Sanders is no Jesse Jackson in the rhetoric dept. Although with both of
them you end up in the same place. Back where you started. He sounded like a
political prisoner reciting lines written by James Carville. A willing
prisoner.

+ Bernie kept repeating the withered platitude that; "We're stronger when we
stand together." But together with whom? For what? Perhaps all the crying
was at the ragged spectacle of Sanders humiliating himself for 50 straight
minutes on behalf of a ticket which has only contempt for him and his
followers.

+ Read it and Weep. Here's the text of Sanders
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/26/what-this-election-is-about-speech-t
o-dnc-convention/>  speech to the Convention (Minus booing, crying and
shouts of "You've got to be fucking kidding me, Bernie!")

+ The New York Times headline on Sanders's political role at the Convention
pretty much it: "Leader of
<http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/us/politics/bernie-sanders-speech.html?hp
&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-packag
e-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0>  a Revolt Now Must Put One
Down." Poor Bernie: he started out as Danton and ends up as Edmund Burke.

+ Mike Whitney sends me note from the backwoods of northwest Washington
State: "As has happened so often before, the Democratic Party has become the
graveyard of a movement of social protest, with Sanders serving as the
undertaker."

+ This was a fun but exhausting experiment in trying to annotate an entire
day at the Democratic convention. I have a new respect for obsessive
Tweeters like Doug Henwood <https://www.facebook.com/doug.henwood> . It
reminded me of how different things are now from 2000, when I was the "color
commentator" for BBC Radio on the final night of the Democratic Convention
in Los Angeles and the BBC announcer kept trying to get me to say that Al
Gore had suddenly found a new spark of energy. I replied to his displeasure,
"Yes, like the Mummy after his reanimation." That was the night Al tongue
raped <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0wDNESHl8M>  Tipper Gore in front of
an international TV audience. I doubt Hillary will tongue rape Bill on
Thursday night. But we can always hope. To paraphrase Alexander Cockburn on
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, if anyone ever deserved to be raped on
live TV it's Bill Clinton.

 

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