The behavior of numerous Democrats in the leadership, acting as if there was not problem with the content of the E-mails that were leaked, is so absurd it boggles the mind. I can't help but wonder what they could possibly expect to accomplish with this, or if they're collectively insane or delusional enough to believe their own spin.
Or if they're so delusional that they could expect more than a small fraction of the public not to see right through it.
Efforts to blame the Russians are absurd and logically flawed especially when you consider a few fundamental basics that were available to the public before they even leaked, and these fundamentals aren't even secret, although there is an enormous amount of propaganda that has been distracting a shocking percentage of the public that hardly even thinks things through.
In order to have a viable chance to get elected president the first thing any candidate has to do is get name recognition; and since the media was consolidated into six oligarchies under the Clinton administration that means that only candidates covered by those oligarchies have a chance. This consolidation began under the Reagan administration and both the Bush and Obama administration attempted to increase consolidation but faced enormous grassroots opposition which was only covered widely through alternative media outlets or brief reports in the traditional media, that were quickly forgotten.
On top of that in the late eighties the debate process was taken away from grassroots organization including the League of Women Voters and handed to the Commission of Presidential Debates, which works with the DNC and RNC to exclude all other candidates when possible by requiring fifteen percent in polls controlled by the media that refuses to cover grassroots candidates.
This enables the six oligarchies controlling the media to work with the DNC, RNC and Commission of Presidential Debates to restrict the viable candidates to those they approve of. These efforts to limit choices enabled them to ensure that many other candidates including Jill Stein, Gary Johnson and almost certainly many that no one ever even heard of will have a chance.
If they really did want to rig the election against Donald Trump or for Hillary Clinton they've demonstrated that they could and would do just that. They ensure that only a small percentage of the public can ever be considered; and even if the Russians did do some manipulating they couldn't have come close to doing nearly as much damage as the establishments controlling the election process no matter what they do.
They certainly couldn't have arranged for Trump to win without help from the Mainstream media giving him obsessive coverage throughout the campaign while refusing to cover grassroots candidates.
The Russians certainly couldn't have forced the mainstream media to only cover candidates that were under criminal investigation and down play efforts to report epidemic levels of voter irregularities all over the country, which were reported at grassroots level throughout the primary.
The mainstream media began presenting Hillary Clinton as the inevitable front runner in 2013, if not in 2009; and never provided adequate coverage for many if any candidates to challenge her since. The entire political establishment endorsed her before any voters had their say even though she had enormous negative poll ratings due to her epidemic levels of scandals that go back decades. This enabled Trump to beat her; however there is no way that he could have done that if the media hadn't given him obsession coverage or abstained from giving other candidates fair coverage.
Bernie Sanders had much more support but clearly the entire system was rigged against him.
However that doesn't mean that the E-mails aren't relevant since they do confirm what well informed people already knew, and fills in some of the blanks about the discussions behind the scenes that helped rig elections, and prevent Bernie Sanders or any other candidate from getting a reasonable chance. Yet that doesn't stop them from lining up one pundit after another to come out and claim there is noting to the claims of election rigging, including Glen Caplin who said the following on the Rachel Maddow show:
The Rachel Maddow Show, Transcript 3/17/2017
CAPLIN: The coverage tended – was more about what was in the e-mails as opposed to why these e-mails existed, who is responsible for putting the e- mails into the public discourse and why and that was – that was frustrating. .....
CAPLIN: In the end, none of the e-mails themselves were particularly damaging but for the last 35 days of the election, it was a headwind that was constantly in the news. .... Complete article
CAPLIN: The coverage tended – was more about what was in the e-mails as opposed to why these e-mails existed, who is responsible for putting the e- mails into the public discourse and why and that was – that was frustrating. .....
CAPLIN: In the end, none of the e-mails themselves were particularly damaging but for the last 35 days of the election, it was a headwind that was constantly in the news. .... Complete article
This is amazing, both sides claim that the existence of leaks about their own wrong doing are the problem not their own crimes; yet both sides take the opposite position when it comes to the other side. The Podesta leak took place on the same day the Access Hollywood video was leaked and Trump claims that that leak along with more that have taken place since he took office is the problem and that no one should consider the content which he calls "locker room talk" even though it wasn't in a locker room and even if it was it would still be outrageous.
The leaks provided enormous amounts of information about psychological manipulation and collusion with the media and even attempts to incite violence for political reasons. I went into much more of this while the were happening and will provide links below for anyone that is starting to forget some of the details, which is understandable since there are so many things that were disclosed that I don't see how anyone can remember them all.
Donna Brazile has been even more audacious in her denials and outright lies sometimes mixed in with selective admissions accompanied by incredibly bad spin like the following statements:
Donna Brazile admits stealing debate questions for Hillary, but blames the Russians 03/18/2017
In October, a subsequent release of emails revealed that among the many things I did in my role as a Democratic operative and D.N.C. Vice Chair prior to assuming the interim D.N.C. Chair position was to share potential town hall topics with the Clinton campaign. I had been working behind the scenes to add more town hall events and debates to the primary calendar, and I helped ensure those events included diverse moderators and addressed topics vital to minority communities. My job was to make all our Democratic candidates look good, and I worked closely with both campaigns to make that happen. But sending those emails was a mistake I will forever regret.
By stealing all the DNC’s emails and then selectively releasing those few, the Russians made it look like I was in the tank for Secretary Clinton. Despite the strong, public support I received from top Sanders campaign aides in the wake of those leaks, the media narrative played out just as the Russians had hoped, leaving Sanders supporters understandably angry and sowing division in our ranks. In reality, not only was I not playing favorites, the more competitive and heated the primary got, the harder D.N.C. staff worked to be scrupulously fair and beyond reproach. In all the months the Russians monitored the D.N.C.’s email, they found just a handful of inappropriate emails, with no sign of anyone taking action to disadvantage the Sanders campaign.
But the damage was done. Politics has never been considered a clean sport, but 2016 marked a new low. The D.N.C., a political party committee dedicated in part to defending free and fair elections, was attacked by the Russians while the Republican nominee for president openly encouraged it. This was not a Hollywood movie about rogue spies and super agents. This was real life. Complete article
Donna Brazile: Passing potential town hall topics to Clinton camp 'a mistake I will forever regret' 03/18/2017
In October, a subsequent release of emails revealed that among the many things I did in my role as a Democratic operative and D.N.C. Vice Chair prior to assuming the interim D.N.C. Chair position was to share potential town hall topics with the Clinton campaign. I had been working behind the scenes to add more town hall events and debates to the primary calendar, and I helped ensure those events included diverse moderators and addressed topics vital to minority communities. My job was to make all our Democratic candidates look good, and I worked closely with both campaigns to make that happen. But sending those emails was a mistake I will forever regret.
By stealing all the DNC’s emails and then selectively releasing those few, the Russians made it look like I was in the tank for Secretary Clinton. Despite the strong, public support I received from top Sanders campaign aides in the wake of those leaks, the media narrative played out just as the Russians had hoped, leaving Sanders supporters understandably angry and sowing division in our ranks. In reality, not only was I not playing favorites, the more competitive and heated the primary got, the harder D.N.C. staff worked to be scrupulously fair and beyond reproach. In all the months the Russians monitored the D.N.C.’s email, they found just a handful of inappropriate emails, with no sign of anyone taking action to disadvantage the Sanders campaign.
But the damage was done. Politics has never been considered a clean sport, but 2016 marked a new low. The D.N.C., a political party committee dedicated in part to defending free and fair elections, was attacked by the Russians while the Republican nominee for president openly encouraged it. This was not a Hollywood movie about rogue spies and super agents. This was real life. Complete article
Donna Brazile: Passing potential town hall topics to Clinton camp 'a mistake I will forever regret' 03/18/2017
She of course, didn't mention the obvious and public efforts by the mainstream media and political establishment that I mentioned above; like the rest of the political establishment they're hoping that if they never mention it and repeat their bad spin over and over again the complacent majority will fall for their scams. Her claim that she was trying to make all candidates look good was a blatant lie, as indicated by the leaks and insults that were public when there was a scandal about them letting their firewall down and blaming Bernie supporters when they informed them about it. Threre were some uses by one Bernie staffer at that time but he was quickly dismissed and the leaks showed that the efforts to rig the primaries against Bernie Sanders were far worse than what that one staffer did.
The DNC and Podesta leaks exposed the fact that the establishment candidates were far more concerned with collecting money to pay their own salaries and come up with effective propaganda to deceive the public than to address the concerns of the voters, making the Democratic Party part of the corporate kleptocracy that enabled trump to get elected. Many people have argued that Trump is even worse, and he often seems that way, but a shockingly large percentage of the public has been falling for the Democratic propaganda and more recognized that something is wrong and voted against them, for Trump. The clear advantage of Trump is that he's no longer even doing a good job pretending to represent the public, nor for that matter is the Democratic Party; however with Trump as the greater evil they've accepted democrats as the resistance even though they obviously aren't.
At least it should be clear that anyone paying attention with reasonable thinking skills must know that the entire process is a sham with both Parties controlled by incredibly corrupt corporations.
Amazingly Tom Perez admitted, perhaps by accident that the election was rigged, before "walking it back" and coming up with a blatant denial that has no credibility if you look closely. However the media is hoping that no one will remember and aren't reporting it, after an initial low profile disclosure.
Fortunately the alternative media has kept a record of it including the following excerpts from an Intercept article by Glen Greenwald:
Tom Perez Apologizes for Telling the Truth, Showing Why Democrats’ Flaws Urgently Need Attention 02/09/2017
The more alarmed one is by the Trump administration, the more one should focus on how to fix the systemic, fundamental sickness of the Democratic Party. That Hillary Clinton won the meaningless popular vote on her way to losing to Donald Trump, and that the singular charisma of Barack Obama kept him popular, have enabled many to ignore just how broken and failed the Democrats are as a national political force.
An endless array of stunning statistics can be marshaled to demonstrate the extent of that collapse. But perhaps the most compelling piece of evidence is that even one of the U.S. media’s most stalwart Democratic loyalists, writing in an outlet that is as much of a reliable party organ as the DNC itself, has acknowledged the severity of the destruction. “The Obama years have created a Democratic Party that’s essentially a smoking pile of rubble,” wrote Vox’s Matthew Yglesias after the 2016 debacle, adding that “the story of the 21st-century Democratic Party looks to be overwhelmingly the story of failure.”
A failed, collapsed party cannot form an effective resistance. Trump did not become president and the Republicans do not dominate virtually all levels of government because there is some sort of massive surge in enthusiasm for right-wing extremism. Quite the contrary: This all happened because the Democrats are perceived — with good reason — to be out of touch, artificial, talking points-spouting automatons who serve Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and the agenda of endless war, led by millionaires and funded by oligarchs to do the least amount possible for ordinary, powerless citizens while still keeping their votes.
What drove Bernie Sanders’s remarkably potent challenge to Hillary Clinton was the extreme animosity of huge numbers of Democrats — led by its youngest voters — to the values, practices, and corporatist loyalties of the party’s establishment. Unlike the 2008 Democratic primary war — which was far more vicious and nasty but devoid of any real ideological conflict — the 2016 primary was grounded in important and substantive disputes about what the Democratic Party should be, what principles should guide it, and, most important of all, whose interests it should serve. ....
An even more illustrative episode occurred late Wednesday. Perez was in Kansas campaigning for votes from county leaders and was asked about the need for the party to retain the support of the Sanders contingent. Perez unexpectedly blurted out a truth that party functionaries to this day steadfastly bury and deny even in the face of the mountain of evidence proving it. This is what Perez said:
"We heard loudly and clearly yesterday from Bernie supporters that the process was rigged and it was. And you’ve got to be honest about it. That’s why we need a chair who is transparent."
That’s quite an admission from the party establishment’s own candidate: “The process was rigged.” And he commendably acknowledged how important it is to admit this — “to be honest about it” — because “we need a chair who is transparent.”
But Perez’s commitment to “transparency” and “being honest” had a very short life-span. After his admission predictably caused controversy — with furious Clinton supporters protesting the truth — Perez demonstrated the same leadership qualities that were so evident when Zaid Jilani asked him about Israeli human rights abuses.
He quickly slinked onto Twitter with a series of tweets to retract what he said, claim that he “misspoke” (does anyone know what that word means?), apologize for it, and proclaim Hillary Clinton the fair and rightful winner: Complete article
The more alarmed one is by the Trump administration, the more one should focus on how to fix the systemic, fundamental sickness of the Democratic Party. That Hillary Clinton won the meaningless popular vote on her way to losing to Donald Trump, and that the singular charisma of Barack Obama kept him popular, have enabled many to ignore just how broken and failed the Democrats are as a national political force.
An endless array of stunning statistics can be marshaled to demonstrate the extent of that collapse. But perhaps the most compelling piece of evidence is that even one of the U.S. media’s most stalwart Democratic loyalists, writing in an outlet that is as much of a reliable party organ as the DNC itself, has acknowledged the severity of the destruction. “The Obama years have created a Democratic Party that’s essentially a smoking pile of rubble,” wrote Vox’s Matthew Yglesias after the 2016 debacle, adding that “the story of the 21st-century Democratic Party looks to be overwhelmingly the story of failure.”
A failed, collapsed party cannot form an effective resistance. Trump did not become president and the Republicans do not dominate virtually all levels of government because there is some sort of massive surge in enthusiasm for right-wing extremism. Quite the contrary: This all happened because the Democrats are perceived — with good reason — to be out of touch, artificial, talking points-spouting automatons who serve Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and the agenda of endless war, led by millionaires and funded by oligarchs to do the least amount possible for ordinary, powerless citizens while still keeping their votes.
What drove Bernie Sanders’s remarkably potent challenge to Hillary Clinton was the extreme animosity of huge numbers of Democrats — led by its youngest voters — to the values, practices, and corporatist loyalties of the party’s establishment. Unlike the 2008 Democratic primary war — which was far more vicious and nasty but devoid of any real ideological conflict — the 2016 primary was grounded in important and substantive disputes about what the Democratic Party should be, what principles should guide it, and, most important of all, whose interests it should serve. ....
An even more illustrative episode occurred late Wednesday. Perez was in Kansas campaigning for votes from county leaders and was asked about the need for the party to retain the support of the Sanders contingent. Perez unexpectedly blurted out a truth that party functionaries to this day steadfastly bury and deny even in the face of the mountain of evidence proving it. This is what Perez said:
"We heard loudly and clearly yesterday from Bernie supporters that the process was rigged and it was. And you’ve got to be honest about it. That’s why we need a chair who is transparent."
That’s quite an admission from the party establishment’s own candidate: “The process was rigged.” And he commendably acknowledged how important it is to admit this — “to be honest about it” — because “we need a chair who is transparent.”
But Perez’s commitment to “transparency” and “being honest” had a very short life-span. After his admission predictably caused controversy — with furious Clinton supporters protesting the truth — Perez demonstrated the same leadership qualities that were so evident when Zaid Jilani asked him about Israeli human rights abuses.
He quickly slinked onto Twitter with a series of tweets to retract what he said, claim that he “misspoke” (does anyone know what that word means?), apologize for it, and proclaim Hillary Clinton the fair and rightful winner: Complete article
The entire political establishment is coming up with excuses so pathetic that only the most complacent would believe it. And they seem to know it, which seems to be why they're relying on an extreme lesser of two evils argument and pretending to be the Resistance against Trump even though they've had plenty of chances to implement a progressive agenda supported by the grassroots. Nancy Pelosi even claims that she wants Single Payer now and has mentioned it at least a couple times before, briefly; however this is an obvious lie for political reasons, like her jumping up and kicking off her heals recently. She's been in power for decades, and the reason that they elect her to lead the Democrats is because she does the best job collecting money for corporations that want preferential treatment from them. If she wanted Single Payer as she now claims she could have been speaking out in favor of it for well over a decade educating the public about the deceptive propaganda given by the political establishment.
However instead of doing that she's been joining in on the propaganda and even famously told us that we had to pass the supposedly Affordable care Act, which was written with help from insurance companies donating to the Democratic Party, before we could know what was in it.
She now claims that it is outrageous for the Republicans to pass their bill in secrecy and rush it through; but she obviously had no such qualms when she did the same thing for her campaign donors.
How many people are going to give her the credit for standing up to the Republican's without remembering she did the same thing?
We would have to be complete idiots to believe that she wanted Single Payer after that.
Sadly there are a shocking percentage of the public that are jumping on the pseudo-resistance movement being led by rhetoric from the Democrats pretending to stand up to the corporations financing them; however the Indivisible protests have turned against them as well in at least a couple cases including protests against both Dianne Feinstein (This article opens up making Feinstein look happy with the protests; however it is clear shortly after that they aren't so happy with her. People that glance at headlines might miss this and believe they support her.) and Debbie Stabenow.
If enough people wake up and educate each other then there's a chance they can get real grassroots reform but if the political establishment has their way then they'll make things even worse than they are and continue destroying the economic and political system until it even starts destroying them selves before they act.
How much damage can they do before there are riots in the streets? Actually occasionally there already are, although they're usually only local; but it can get much worse if the political establishment doesn't stop behaving so extreme.
Edit 03/29/2017: While I was finishing this article Hillary Clinton was already speaking out again demonstrating even more blatant denial of the problems within the Democratic Party and within hours of that Debbie Wasserman Schultz made it even worse when she said, “Respectfully, to Senator Sanders, we are already a grassroots party. I mean, if we were not, we would not have been able to help bring down the absolutely abhorrent health care repeal bill… It’s actually more like semantics. We all agree that we should be and we are a grassroots party that focuses on making sure that we can help people reach the middle class.”
This was in response to Sanders statement, “The Democratic Party today, programmatically, in terms of how it does business, has failed. I mean, the evidence is obvious. It’s not just that we’ve lost the White House and the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House. We’ve lost 900 legislative seats in the last 8 or 9 years.” Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Sanders’s Criticisms of Democrats: We’re Already a Grassroots Party 03/2/2017 However she doesn't even address his comments about losing so many elections nor does she address many of the other problems including her support of Pay Day lenders and many other issues over opposition to Grassroots. Nor does she mention that there was an enormous grassroots opposition to the Republicans that aren't necessarily supportive of her or Hillary.
Hillary Clinton's statements, Hillary Clinton Says She's Back: 'I Will Never Stop Speaking Out' 03/28/2017 were also just as phony and staged; she appeared before a friendly audience which were routinely staged during the campaign and they cheered her on; however it is virtually guaranteed that this was as phony as her campaign events; and if this applause was remotely sincere either at this speech or during the campaign there would have been no way she could have ever lost to Donald Trump.
I did not scream at the TV when I first saw this, since I've become so accustomed to it after watching for way to damn long but I can guarantee that there were almost certainly people all over the country doing just that.
I did not follow one of Elvis's old habits and pull out a shot gun and shoot the TV because it was so full of shit; but I can't rule out the possibility that someone might have done so or at least felt like it they were so outraged.
The outrage was instant on Twitter and other social media outlets which was so predictable.
How could they possibly not know this latest speech and total denial would only inspire even more denial?
If they wanted to know it would happen they could have and would have.
For some tweets to links about Podesta and DNC E-Mails or other election articles see, Blatant election rigging was public long before #PodestaLeaks or #DNCLeaks Blaming Russia for that is insane!
