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,

 

Editor, The Amazing Democrats. 

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“No matter what side you’re on or not on, your opinion and vote does really matter”. – Be involved and be heard. 

by Olga Bugorkova and Ghada Tantawi (BBC News)

It was wildly popular, but not everybody likes Facebook’s pro-gay marriage photo filter – it’s prompted a backlash in Russia and across the Arab world.

If you went on Facebook over the weekend you may have seen friends’ profile pictures turned multi-coloured. Maybe you even tinted your own pic. A rainbow filter tool was introduced by the company after last week’s landmark Supreme Court decision which cleared the way for same-sex marriage across the US. But in some areas of the world the response to the initiative was less than enthusiastic – and even downright hostile.

In Russia, several filters were created which splash the colours of the national flags rather than rainbow banners across a picture. One such app has been downloaded more than 4,000 times. “Our response to the rainbow world ‪#‏Proudtoberussian,” said one typical comment by Moscow resident Elena Starkova.

Russia has controversial laws which ban providing information about homosexuality to people under age 18, and a recent poll showed that more than 80% of Russians oppose legalising same-sex marriage.

Despite this, some Russians back lashed against the backlash. Anna Koterlnikova, who had changed her profile pic to a rainbow flag, commented: “Sorry! I’m straight and Russian but I’m not a homophobe!”

In the Middle East, many social media users also came out strongly against the rainbow flag. “It’s a message that it hurts me,” said Egyptian Twitter user Sharif Najm, while Rami Isa from Syria tweeted: “Damn you and your marriage. You have distorted our innocent childhood [symbol], we used to like the rainbow.” Ahmad Abd-Rabbuh, an Egyptian political science professor, said that gay marriage “is not in harmony with society and culture.”

“I know that I will make many of my friends angry,” he commented.

In Egypt, around 2,000 tweets mentioned the rainbow motif, most of them critical. Some users even went so far as to sarcastically blame a weekend storm on users who turned their profile pics multi-coloured. But not all reaction was negative. Egyptian TV presenter Muna Iraqi commented: “[I support people’s] right to live and love freely, without any persecution.”

Of course, it also should be noted that same-sex marriage is by no means universally popular in the US – about two-fifths of Americans oppose it, according to the Pew Research Center.

“I’m 100% against gay marriage,” tweeted Joshua Taipale. “I have gay friends and they’re great ppl; it’s not personal. But U.S. can’t decide. Should be state-by-state.”

And some transsexual activists continue their criticism of Facebook – which sponsors San Francisco’s gay pride parade – for its “real name” policy. 

 

 

 

 

by Robert Schlesinger (US News)

 It is a rare day indeed that I find myself agreeing with former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, but I applaud this sentiment about the Supreme Court’s affirming marriage equality in Obergefell v. Hodges: “Now is the people’s opportunity [to] respond because the future of the institution of marriage is too important to not have a public debate.”

I agree. Bring it on. Love is love – and if the GOP wants to go to war over that, well that’s just fine.

Of course Santorum isn’t a lonely cultural revanchist. Most of his fellow 2016 aspirants have trashed the decision. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee – a happy warrior before the changing national landscape highlighted his angry crusader side – railed against an “imperial court” and called for supporters to “resist and reject judicial tyranny.” Former. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was more circumspect, saying he supports traditional marriage and that the court was wrong, but avoiding inflammatory rhetoric of resistance and rebellion. “In a country as diverse as ours, good people who have opposing views should be able to live side by side,” Bush said in his statement.

The degree to which GOP presidential wannabe response to the decision is unhinged seems indirectly related to their standing in the polls – the closer they are to bottom, the more hysterical their histrionics. Which makes sense for two reasons: The Huckabees and Santorums of the field are desperately trying to make the top-10 cut for the first debate, on Fox in August. The easiest way to do that is to claim the mantle of most outraged culture warrior. On the other end of the spectrum, people like Bush who stand a chance of being the nominee don’t want Obergefell to become their 2016 version of Mitt Romney’s “self-deportation” – a debate moment that long outlives its utility and becomes an anchor in the general election.

The problem with Huckabee, Santorum and the other members of the righteous GOP who were so quick to issue statements of condemnation is that they are trying to refight the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s but seem incapable of grasping that the nation has changed.

President Barack Obama this morning aptly compared the decision to “justice” arriving “like a thunderbolt.” The storm that produced that thunderbolt gathered with shocking speed. Who would have believed 11 years ago that the GOP’s shameless 2004 campaign strategy – using anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives to rally its base – would prove to be a fleeting high water mark before the tide of public opinion and then, following it, the la

]When Gallup asked respondents in 2005 whether same-sex marriage should be legal, a mere 37 percent answered in the affirmative. As recently as 2010 the polling organization found that only 44 percent believed it should be legal. Last month that number had rocketed from minority to supermajority – by 60 percent to 37 percent Americans believe that marriage equality should be legal.

Now the Supreme Court has ruled – correctly – that the Constitution’s equal protection clause does apply, well, equally – that law in this case happily conforms to the beliefs of the American people. If the leaders and would-be leaders of the Republican Party wish to spend the next year lecturing the public about why it’s wrong, then by all means they should go right ahead.

The conservative columnist (and as a New York Daily News columnist, my corporate cousin) S.E. Cupp was visibly moved on CNN this morning discussing the ruling. She gave an eloquent warning to her party: This isn’t a moment in history, she said, it’s the future. She’s right. The Pew Research Center has tracked the same evolution on the issue as Gallup and has broken it out by age group. They found that your likelihood of supporting marriage equality is directly related to your age. The younger you are, the more likely you are to support it – and support has been growing across all age groups. Here’s the Pew chart:

As Cupp said, this isn’t a data point, it’s a trend. It’s the future.

You can’t fight the future, but the Republican Party is certainly welcome to try.