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Cake day: March 20th, 2024

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  • To clarify, that case was thrown out becuase plaintiffs lacked standing. I guess that counts as the DNC winning?

    In Wilding v DNC:

    Plaintiffs filed a putative class action alleging that during the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries the DNC and its chairwoman improperly tipped the scales in favor of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was challenging Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination.

    This website reports a similar quote about replacing candidates though with more context:

    [I]f you had a charity where somebody said, Hey, I’m gonna take this money and use it for a specific purpose, X, and they pocketed it and stole the money, of course that’s different. But here, where you have a party that’s saying, We’re gonna, you know, choose our standard bearer, and we’re gonna follow these general rules of the road, which we are voluntarily deciding, we could have — and we could have voluntarily decided that, Look, we’re gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way. That’s not the way it was done. But they could have. And that would have also been their right, and it would drag the Court well into party politics, internal party politics to answer those questions." - DNC attorney Bruce Spiva

    That isn’t the entire quote and it seems to be missing some important context. The link to the transcript is dead unfortunately.

    Even if that is the complete context:

    • I don’t know if what Spiva is saying is legally true. As the Trump trial has shown us just because a lawyer argues something in court does not mean it’s true or legal.
    • Assuming what Spiva is saying was true then and is still true now, he also says “And that would have also been their right, and it would drag the Court well into party politics, internal party politics to answer those questions.” I’m not 100% sure what this means because of the missing context, but it seems to imply simply picking the candidate in a cigar filled room would have brought legal trouble to the DNC.

    It’s still not clear the DNC can unilaterally replace Biden as the candidate without his consent. If they did it would open a whole host of new problems, the least of which is how do the pick the new nominee now that nearly all states have already held their primaries.

    Saying “it’s a simple thing that has to happen, just do it DNC” is just blatant misinformation.

    Also, Spiva appears to no longer work for the DNC. It isn’t clear if their current counsel holds the same opinion.


  • But one DNC lawyer’s argument actually tries to justify the party’s right to be biased on behalf of one primary candidate over another, according to an article from The Young Turks. In other words, they could have chosen their nominee over cigars in a backroom. That’s what the attorney reportedly said in a Florida federal court:

    Do you have a more reliable source than “a laywer said”? Do you know which lawyer is alleged to have said it? Do you know if that lawyer is still working for the DNC? Have the DNC bylaws changed sine 2017 when this quote is alleged to be from?

    You’re making a lot of assumptions based on a poorly sourced anonymous quote from 7 years ago.



  • Honestly I think they’re just to pretend like that doesn’t exist. I would be interested to hear their stance on it though.

    There isn’t a lot of self consistency with the conservative logic around abortion. Abortion is murder to them, but they drive by abortion clinics every day and do nothing. You’d think a building dedicated to murdering children would demand a stronger response.

    Abortion is murder, but it’s okay to murder the child if it wasn’t conceived under the right conditions.

    Abortion is murder, but we can leave it up to the states to decide when it’s murder and when it’s okay.

    Just a lot of mental gymnastics.


  • They’ve backed themselves into an ideological corner.

    For years the right has campaigned against abortion on the premise that “life begins at conception”. Because of this stance IVF puts them into a tricky situation: continue to maintain their extreme view that life begins at conception and oppose IVF, or accept IVF and concede that life doesn’t begin at conception.

    If they accept IVF then that undermines their entire argument against abortion, which is obviously not a choice you make if your goal is to make all abortions illegal. So conservstives take the ridiculous stance that IVF embryos are babies, and since some embryos are lost during the IVF process, IVF must be murder.






  • Why didn’t the AIPAC spend $15 million to buy AOCs seat as well if that’s all there is to it?

    I think something you may not be taking into account is that Bowman’s district was redrawn since he first got elected, drastically changing his constituency:

    The congressional district’s boundaries have shifted since Bowman first won office in 2020, losing most of its sections in the Bronx and adding more of Westchester County’s suburbs. Today, 21% of its voting-age population is Black and 42% is non-Hispanic white, according to U.S. Census figures, compared to 30% Black and 34% white in the district as it existed through 2022. Bowman is Black. Latimer is white.

    This change made him particularly susceptible to a primary challenge, regardless of PAC spending.

    This article shows the AIPAC has contributed almost $900 thousand to Wesley Bell’s campaign as of April 30th. This isn’t total spending in the race, just direct campaign contributions. Still less than they contributed to the Latimer’s campaign for sure, but not insignificant. We’re still almost 6 weeks until the Missouri primary election which is when the spending usually ramps up. To do an apples to apples comparison at this point in time would take more time than I care to invest but I’d love to see the results if you want to do it. Regardless of the exact figures, it’s clear the AIPAC is targeting only specific progressive Democratic candidates, and it seems to me the reason they’re doing so is because the candidates are already politically vulnerable.

    Also Latimer beat Bowman by nearly 17% per NBC news.


  • I respect sticking to his principles, but sometimes in politics you have to do something you find distasteful for the greater good.

    We have no idea what would have happened had Bowman kept his head down about Israel, but we do know that speaking out against the invasion of Gaza and calling for a ceasefire didn’t really move the needle on actually achieving a ceasefire. It did make him unpopular with his constituents and made him vulnerable to a primary challenger.

    Now Bowman is probably going to lose his seat in congress and there’s one less progressive voice and vote in congress.

    I don’t know what the full outcome of this will be, but sometimes doing the right thing causes more harm than good in the very morally gray area of politics.


  • Why do you think that is?

    My opinion and all the evidence I’ve seen is that It’s because AOC wasn’t vulnerable.

    Polls from March show Bowman was already in trouble as far back as March. Bowman’s campaign (the Upswing research poll) showed Latimer and Bowman were essentially tied. That’s bad for an incumbant. The AIPAC poll from the Melman group around the same time showed an overwhelming preference for Latimer over Bowman. That’s when the AIPAC started pouring money in to the campaign to exploit that weakness.

    The AIPAC research showed Bowman was vulnerable, similar to why the AIPAC is spending big to replace Cori Bush but they are essentially leaving Ilhan Omar (so far).

    The AIPAC analysts are highly skilled at collecting and analyzing data. This allows them to know how and where to spend their money to get the maximum return on their investment. They aren’t going to waste money trying to defeat a candidate like AOC who is still largely popular with their constituents.




  • I thinking Bowman might have missed the Overton window in his district:

    Bowman’s troubles started last fall, when he began speaking out in the days after Oct. 7 as one of Congress’s leading critics of Israel’s war with Hamas. His stand — for a cease-fire and against American military aid — galvanized younger Democrats and the party’s left flank. But in a heavily Jewish district, it also helped foment a backlash that led Jewish leaders to recruit a formidable primary challenger, George Latimer; prompted a pro-Israel lobby to pump a record-shattering $15 million into the race; and eventually lit a match under old tensions over race, class and ideology.

    Source

    Link to donate to Bowman’s campaign

    Edit: After thinking about this some more I feel like this is a great example of what makes being a politician so hard and why sometimes taking the stand on right side of history can make things worse.

    Bowman obviously wants to do the right thing and end the Gaza invasion, so he spoke out publicly against it. He doesn’t seem to understand his constituency though, and as a result there’s a good chance he’s going to lose his seat at the table.

    Unfortunately his speaking out publucly doesn’t really seem to have moved the needle towards improving the situation in Gaza.

    So by speaking out without understanding his constituents he might be losing his seat, we citizens of the United States are potentially losing one vote for progressive issues, we’re potentially gaining a vote for aggressive pro-Isreali causes, and the invasion of Gaza rolls on without even noticing.

    So was Bowman’s sacrifice worth it? I guess we’ll see in November.


  • Biden’s sanctions on solar panels from China has resulted in protected monopolies jacking up costs.

    This claim is not supported by the article in any fashion.

    Summary from the article:

    Clean Energy Associates released a summary of the seven solar module trade policies and solar panel import tariffs currently in place, including AD/CVD rulings, Section 201/302, and the Uyghur Protection Act. These tariffs have significantly increased, or will increase, the cost of hardware imports into the United states – predominantly from China, but not exclusively – by 91% to 286%

    The article addresses how the tariffs are expected to increase the prices of solar panels imported from various countries.

    This seems like yet another blatant misrepresentation of facts as part of OPs aggressive voter suppression campaign to make Joe Biden look bad in order to help Donald Trump get elected.






  • You not only seem to be misunderstanding gas lighting still but also the messaging around the economy and the response to the Gaza invasion.

    Fun fact: the economy can be doing great and poor people can still exist. Let that doozy sink in.

    Another neat one: the Biden administration can want peace in Israel but not be willing to destroy the relationship we have with that country, alienate a huge portion of Biden voter, or destroy the political capital he has in order to get peace.