It isn’t a case of the Democrats now going off soul searching, it case of total revamp from top to bottom after Trump’s win last Tuesday. The Amazing Democrats’ advice very early on to the Clinton Campaign (and some of those comments were posted on our social media platforms as far back as the late summer of 2015) went unheard unlike when we worked for the Obama/Biden campaign in 2012. It is time DNC to fire all your overpaid pollsters (who got it so wrong), consultants and the like. The DNC should of known in their hearts of hearts that after Bernie Sanders won twenty-two states with so little money against Hillary Clinton, their candidate of choice would be in serious trouble if the Republicans got a candidate who could storm the mainstream and social media which Trump did and of course got a bit of luck along the way with that first letter released by the FBI Director that certainly damaged Hillary in early voting and gave a huge boast for Trump with his base. Yes, a lot of questions will be asked as to how the FBI were allowed to influence an election so openly. But this was far from the only reason Hillary lost even if the DNC die hards believe it to be so. The DNC and Democrats have lost their way and have been now for a long time. Their obsession only seems to be with fundraising not the core principles of what the party was founded on, Trump was able to tap into that huge hole in the DNC. It was a party that once cared for the low income, the homeless, our veterans, the poor people of America and not the massive billions of dollars in fundraising which was totally wasted trying to take Trump down. Just think today how many homeless people that billion of dollars plus would do to help house the homeless crisis in our major cities which should have been a top issue for Hillary.
Hillary campaign interviewed myself and members of The Amazing Democrats, for the record we call ourselves The Amazing Democrats as we not die hard Democrats, we wouldn’t have followed Hillary in to the fires of hell if she was wrong and we wouldn’t be silent either even if it meant we were fired from the campaign, that’s the way worked in the Obama/Biden 2012 reelection campaign and we were amazed how we survived not to be fired (nearly maybe once or twice when we really overstepped our mark and criticized some of the President’s polices publicly). The interviewing process went back as far as January 2016 to join her campaign. We were subjected to rounds and rounds of interviews, back ground checks, etc. Months would go by and we heard nothing and then it would start all over again. It was by late August this Editor got interviewed for the sixth time, more back ground checks and then was offered four important positions in four different swing states and one of this offers came directly from the DNC. All this was paid employment and not volunteer work. That last weekend in August for me was were I suffered so much turmoil as I had to give them a decision by the following Monday. It meant dropping everything in my life and getting on a plane to Pennsylvania. What was most troubling in my mind was I could sense there was panic setting in for the Democrats and Hillary’s campaign. I didn’t sleep that weekend. I went back to the old formula that the Obama campaign thought me and even though I didn’t have access to data like we did when worked for Obama, never the less, I ran the data all weekend long. It is a long and laborious process that you can see today that both the pollsters and media don’t do, why? Maybe they just are too lazy to do it, who knows? You have to run every state’s county’s data county by county, you have then figure in the data available from both the candidates’ primary wins or loses, a lot of mathematics but in the end you get a somewhat overview, be it very rough. Also you have to take into account that I had been tracking the swing states every week since both primaries ended last year. Not good for Hillary and her team I could see, in fact the Wednesday before the election I was gloomy, I could predict Trump was going to win Ohio by three percent (he won by five percent so I was only out by two percent) and as you know, no Presidential candidate can take their place in The White House if they don’t win Ohio. With all this, it was the hardiest email I ever sent, declining the positions to work on the Hillary Clinton campaign.
As we move into the Trump Presidency, it’s going to be a very dark lonely path for the Democrats. Yes, there is the mid-terms in 2018, but if the DNC works as it has for the last twenty years, they are a very slow climb back up on Capitol Hill as remember this Presidential election in 2016 had the lowest turn out of voters in years, which helped Trump but destroyed Hillary’s chances of winning, nearly 50% of the electorate didn’t bother to vote and historically mid-term voting has a very low voter turn-out. Also if Trump makes any small success of his first term and as everything Trump touches turns to gold, whether you like his manner and process or not and as it very hard to unseat a sitting President, as we all know, Trump going for a second term, then the DNC and Democrats could be looking at the wildness for next eight years at least, that’s 2024, a very depressing thought I know, but maybe a fact unless the DNC make radically chances and that starts today, not six months before the 2018 mid-terms.
In the 2006 mid-terms under George W. Bush, the Republicans got wiped out in the House and the Senate. All the media said at that time that Republican Party need to reinvent itself and stop been the “party of no”. Did they? Of course not, in fact under Obama as President and because of their hatred of him, they became the “party of no, no, no” on every bill he sent to the House and Senate. Now look where they are ten years later. The power of Washington again with the Democrats hanging onto their coattails and the sad thing is, Trump gets to pick the next Supreme Court justice. If he gets two terms, who knows, with three more justices ready for retirement in the next few years, he might even hit the golden jackpot of nominating four Supreme Court justices, a very scary thought. The Democrats however can’t do as the Republicans did in 2006, which was nothing to change their image and beliefs but the Democrats aren’t so lucky. If the DNC go back to business as usual, it will be a very dark long road for the Democrats back to the shining lights of The White House. It is simply the base. The Republican base and the Democrat base is so so much different and as Trump said decades ago when he was a registered Democrat, pro-choice and donated a lot of money to Bill Clinton’s Presidential campaigns: “If I was to run as President, I would run as a Republican as their voters as so dumb and easy to fool, I would lie and lie to them until I got numbers”. That’s all he had to do for this Presidential campaign and he is the winner today not Hillary Clinton.
Which brings what fundamentally went south very early on in the Hillary Clinton campaign:
1. NEVER EVER underestimate your opponent.
2. If he/she gets down in the dirt, you go down there with them. Hillary taking the high road was her downfall as political correctness (PC) means nothing anymore in the world of social media as we saw with Trump, the King of Twitter and Obama/Biden in 2008 as the King of Facebook. PC has gone way too far in the US and the rest of the world and Trump, no matter what you think, turned PC on it’s head in this presidential election and as he said on 60 Minutes last night, “it was nasty, very nasty but I am the one sitting here today talking to you and not them”. In fact 2020 and 2024 will be so so much nastier. Rumors were that Trump using his own money, paid pockets of supporters all over America to flood the internet with lies about Hillary and Bill Clinton and the secret? They could never be traced back to him or his campaign. Why didn’t the Hillary Clinton campaign do the same with the rumors about Trump’s ties to the Mafia? Why was this never floated all over the internet? PC I guess but he won and Clinton lost. The new trend now with Presidential campaigns as Trump has lowered the bar, is to win 2020 or 2024 the candidates from both parties to win, will have to get down in the mud and get dirty. Sad? Of course but no cares about the loser, they only care about the winner.
3. Dump the negative ads. One billion dollars was such a waste of money by the Clinton campaign and Trump barely spent a faction of that. We kept telling the Obama/Biden campaign and the DNC in 2012, negative ads don’t work anymore and only turn all the voters off. Pity they didn’t listen.
The Amazing Democrats are not all about criticizing without offering the DNC suggestions for the road forward:
1. Fire all your overpaid pollsters, consultants, lobbyists, etc..
2. Allow the progressive members of the party to take over. (I do not mean the loony left), members who understand the issues of the day to day worries of the lower income Americans (who sadly are too many), the homeless crisis in our cities all over America, our veterans living on our streets.
3. Get back to what a community organizer really is. I used get so annoy with new volunteers who joined our team who tried to tell the person forcefully on the other side of the phone why they should vote for Obama or donate to Obama’s campaign and the DNC. A community organizer’s job is to listen and listen well and then send what they hear up the line and hope they are listening otherwise you get a result like Tuesday’s Presidential elections.
4. As the advice to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, get off the negative ads obsession (turns all voters off).
5. And please with every email you sent, stop looking for donations all the time. It makes us feel you don’t care about anything but money and donations which we know to be true.
6. Find the soul of the Democrat Party again of FDR and John F. Kennedy.
7. And finally, listen. Never stop listening to those on the ground as we are the ones who can make the difference from the Democrats winning or losing an election.
Here is to the 2018 mid-terms, see you then and to 2020 Presidential election. Keep the faith and a sense of humor as The Amazing Democrats do and God Bless America,
We can spin on and on about Emailgate, Watergate, why she didn’t leave Bill when he cheated on her or as some Republicans have already started in Congress this week, we can wheel in the boring gender debate. You thought the 2012 Presidential Election went to an all-time low; well just wait until the 2016 Presidential campaign. Not only will the two billion dollar mark for campaign funds be passed in 2016 and maybe even doubled thanks to our Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance and non-disclosure but what will be so different than the 2008 and 2012 Presidential campaigns is that in 2016 the Republicans really want The White House back.
We saw with the 2000 Presidential campaign with George W. Bush Vs Al Gore, when the Republicans really want something, they will stop at nothing to get it, even using the Supreme Court to vote in a President that didn’t even win the popular vote which George w. Bush didn’t. Historically the Democrats tend to go weak at knees when the Republicans bully their way into office. I for one, always deep down, wish that I could be able to reach out to the Republicans and try and find some common ground on some of the issues, especially the Presidential campaigns. For one, roughly five corporations in the U.S. own ninety-five percent of all our media outlets thanks to President Regan who overturned President Kennedy’s executive order banning such. One backroom deal (backroom so not to upset the far right or the far left) is a gentleman’s agreement (sorry gentleperson’s agreement) with senior figures from the Republican and Democrat parties to agree on not funding attack or negative television and radio adverts against their opponents. We have so much data from Presidential Elections that these adverts turn the voters off and actually are counterproductive as they turn away would be new voters off voting all together. On top of that, all those millions of dollars spent on this type of advertising goes into the fat profit sheet of these same five corporations who at the end of the day have no loyalty to the candidates that are buying all their air time and have time and time proving that all they care about is their bottom line and not what is best for the American election process.
Take a look at Hillary’s 3am in the morning White House adverting in the 2008 campaign. To me, thirty years in Public Relations and Communications, this is one of the most positive campaign adverts I have seeing in decades:
This advert should be the foundation of Hillary’s 2016 Presidential campaign. We now know she is going to run and will more than likely announce in April (2015), we just don’t know the date. When she was at the Irish-American Awards ceremony this week in New York where she was awarded the Irish America magazine lifetime achievement award, sources close to us confirm that enough hints were dropped by Hillary’s people to confirm that she is running in 2016. This is always smart politics; she is what they say, setting the mood and seeing what the reaction of media and public is before she formally announces she is running. President Obama did the same in 2008. It also creates a buzz and a level of excitement amongst the grassroots of the party. Since the leaks of this week at that event, some (not all of course) within the media are starting to write more positively about Hillary Clinton because to be honest, like her or hate her, if she doesn’t run (which she must certainly is) we all would be bitterly disappointed and would bore very easily with the line-up of 2016 Presidential candidates if she wasn’t running and there in the mix.
Hillary Clinton is needed more than ever to take lead of our Country; we are in very strange and dangerous times. I talked to young voters a lot and there is an awaking out there like I have never seeing before. They are so unsure of the world with the so many conflicts happening. Camp fires in a lot of dangerous parts of the world that are not being put out. They are tuned into what is happening in the world, they may not fully grasp the history of how and why it is happening but never the less it is up there on the forefront of their minds with finding a good job after they leave college.
However, it will not be easy as it wasn’t campaign finance wise in the 2008 and 2012 Presidential elections. The Presidential campaign of 2016 will be all about the campaign finance raised as already Sheldon Alderson of Las Vegas and the Koch brothers have raised nearly two billion dollars for 2016 for the Republican Presidential candidate and Hillary looks set to raise one billion dollars but this doesn’t even take into account the finance raised for the Republicans by the Republican’s Super PACs, by Jeb Bush himself and our old favorites Dick Cheney and Karl Rove’s Crossroad’s Super PAC. As we mentioned the ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on campaign financing and non-disclosure is going to ensure the 2016 Presidential campaign hits an all-time campaign financing high and hitting all time historic records It is such a sad reflection on our political process that not necessary the best candidate wins the election but the one who has raised the most campaign finance could, something this current Congress has no interest in readdressing.
I disagree we need a new face in 2016 for the Democratic Presidential candidate, we got that in 2008 with President Obama and even though he might have a break through with talks with Iran, there is so much in his Foreign Policy agenda that seven years on are in tatters. His relationship with President Putin is non-existent; no U.S. President has ever had such a poor relationship with the Prime Minister of Israel , North Korea is very high up the list of having a nuclear missile and yet nothing seems to be happening to stop North Korea yet Iran is treated differently?
There has only being three President’s in our entire history that had the experience of the role of Secretary of State before becoming President of the United States of America and that was James Madison, John Quincy Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Whatever is said about their Presidency, their Foreign Affairs knowledge stood to them and to the benefit of the United States for future generations to come. Hillary Clinton will be the fourth former Secretary of State in history when she is elected President of the United States in 2016.
The Secretary of State historically was more powerful than the Vice-President of the United States, who really just sits in waiting unless the President gives him a more important role in his/hers Presidency but at any time the President should he or she so wish to, can sidetrack their VP anytime. However it is not so easy to sidetrack their Foreign Affairs chief advisor the Secretary of State and the Administration’s Ambassador to the world when it comes to the President’s Foreign Policy. We have seeing from history how a bad Secretary of State can land a President in a lot of trouble. Take Henry Kissinger in case and point for the Nixon Administration. A lot of historians point out that the Vietnam War would have taken a whole different direction if Nixon had appointed someone more suitable for that role as Kissinger was not of like minds with Nixon and his Administration. Nixon’s downfall in that regard was just that, he simply had too much regard for Kissinger’s opinions in cabinet. The Secretary of State is the most senior member of the President’s cabinet and sits next to the President at formal White House events even trumping over former Presidents.
Hillary Clinton even with her health problem scare when she had a brain clot is the most traveled (air miles) of any Secretary of State the U.S. has ever has had. She has an incredible understanding of the Northern Ireland Peace Process and was instrumental in encouraging her husband Bill on making hard decisions to move that process along. Hence, why this week she was awarded the Irish America magazine lifetime achievement award in New York. She has a huge grasp on the complexities of the Middle East and what is required to bring peace to the region. We have no sense of why she was over ruled by the President on a way forward for that region. Hillary was totally against the killing of Bin Laden, she wanted him arrested, brought to the United States to stand trial for the murder of three thousand U.S. citizens on 9/11. In the photograph released by The White House as the President and his National Security team watched the Navy Seals kill Bin Laden from The White House’s situation room, it isn’t rock science that from Hillary Clinton’s face that she wanted no part of this and again that is where she and the President differed. She may have a point for where in the Constitution of the United States does it give the power to our President to order the death of another human being without due process. An act of war is a different debate altogether and when you join any military, you know you are to fight when it is required of you for your country.
Hillary Clinton was the only senior visiting dignitary to China who pointed out to the Chinese President in private that the U.S. and the World’s had huge concerns for their terrible human rights record. What other leader has done this? When the Chinese protested to The White House about this, no doubt Hillary got an earful from the President. We know that when the President of Syria was killing his own citizens in Syria two years ago with chemical weapons, Hillary Clinton wanted the U.S. to launch air strikes against that regime in Syria with a UN mandate but the President Obama refused to attack. Instead today President Obama and the U.S. relies on that same President of Syria who used chemical weapons on thousands of his people to help us attack IS in Syria.
Look at the graceful way Hillary took the loss of the Presidency nomination in 2008 by the Democratic Party super delegates. They knifed her in the back and betrayed the Clintons and handed the nomination to then Senator Obama. Did we ever hear any bitterness in her voice over that? And what about President Obama informing her that she and Bill’s huge 2008 election campaign debt would be wiped off if she took the job as Secretary of State for one term? Which she did. That was a smart move on the President’s part as no one, especially the President, would want Hillary Clinton on the outside taking pot shots at the Administration inside The White House.
All this aside if Hillary Clinton drops her old team of cronies she has had since 2008 as we witnessed with Emailgate how incompetently they really are and the way they handled it, did her more her harm than good. If she courts the media and not hide from them and if she would just be herself, like when we saw her shed a tear in the café during her 2008 campaign then Hillary is setting a sure course to be in one of the highest offices in the land. I for one, believe that she does not deserves to be President because she was treated so badly even by the Democratic Party but that she is in these times of a lot uncertainty in a very dangerous and violate world the only person who has the qualifications, knowledge and experience for the job and that is why the Amazing Democrats endorse Hillary Clinton to be the next President of the United States.
Watch President Kennedy’s speech in 1961 and it is very similar in context of where the world is going today as it was forty-nine years ago:
If you happen to find yourself flipping through the April issue of Playboy, you’ll land on a wide-ranging interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney.
In excerpts published online Tuesday, the greatest takeaway is that Cheney is not fond of President Obama. At all.
(There are 10 hours of tape, or about 80,000 words, from the Cheney interview that reporter James Rosen said could someday exist in book form.)
Cheney’s choice of outlet to vent his frustrations has angered the D.C.-based National Center on Sexual Exploitation, a nonprofit that advocates against pornography and commercialization of sex. (The group also called for a boycott of the “Fifty Shades of Grey” movie.)
Dawn Hawkins, the group’s executive director, in a release Wednesday accused Cheney of supporting “the hyper-sexualized, pornified state of our nation.”
“Is Dick Cheney trying not to be heard?” Hawkins said. “What woman would find his interview in a magazine that profits from the sexual exploitation of women? Cheney’s action says to women, ‘I’m not talking to you and you’re no more than an object to be gawked at’.”
Of course we’re reminded that Jimmy Carter, a self-described born-again Christian, gave an interview to Playboy in 1976 when he was running for president. There, he famously said, that he had“looked on a lot of women with lust” and had “committed adultery in my heart many times.”
Other noteworthy people who gave Playboy interviews? Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and Ayn Rand.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation must have forgotten that when it promoted several Martin Luther King quotes on its Facebook page on MLK Day this year.
UPDATE: Hawkins got back to us on this point. She said the group feels the same way about any person who gave an interview to Playboy.
“We are not anti-Cheney; we’re anti-exploitation,” she said in an e-mail to the Loop. “Whatever political, artistic, or educational message one desires to communicate, it will have more impact and reach a larger audience if it is communicated in a context that is not sexually exploitative.”
The Amazing Democrats 