Archive for the ‘Ohio’ Tag
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.
Follow us on twitter: @DemocratAmazing
“No matter what side you’re on or not on, your opinion and vote does really matter”. – Be involved and be heard.
Police forces around the country already have implemented the use of body cameras for their Police Officers on duty like the city of San Rafael in California so the President’s announcement yesterday doesn’t go anywhere far enough dealing with the issues we see in Ferguson and the shooting dead of Michael Brown by former Police Officer Wilson. Some Police forces around the country are blue in the face from training. We need a better plan Mr. President and a new code of conduct for our Police Officers. We need a whole new process of investigating citizens complaints against Police Officers. What of the many incidents around the country concerning Police Officers when off duty? Body cameras won’t be of much use in this case and the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice needs a total re-haul as it has proven most ineffective in dealing with citizens complaints against Police Officers. It’s time to take a stand Mr. President and show us how serious you really are as Jon Sopel of the BBC rightly asks: “The uncomfortable question for America is how many other towns and cities across the land have exactly the same cocktail of problems that one spark could ignite?”.
From Jon Sopel (BBC)
The news channels split the TV screen, as they often do. On one side, the president and commander-in-chief of the most powerful army in the world was appealing for calm from protesters and restraint from law enforcement. On the other side, the live shots showed the chaos unfold as Ferguson was blanketed in tear gas and fire. Since the shooting of Michael Brown, America has been enveloped in a wider debate.
Not new questions – anything but – but questions that were pushed into the background with the election of the United States’ first African-American president.
In 2008, those heady days when Mr Obama was first elected, there was the genius slogan that captured the trajectory and history of the civil rights struggle.
“Rosa sat, so that Martin could walk, so that Barack could fly” – to which might be added today -“but people like Michael Brown will still get shot by white police officers.”
The other phrase that was heard again and again was, “So what’s your excuse?”
It was a challenge to the black community from within the black community – to stop making excuses and seize the day, make the most of the myriad opportunities that were ripe for the picking. After all, if an African-American can go all the way to the highest office in the land, what’s stopping you?
America was gripped by the ‘Yes We Can” mantra – and perhaps myth.
For a while, “post-racial” was the watchword. And with it, the debate about disadvantage, discrimination, disaffection (and probably a whole pile of other good sociological words beginning with dis-) seemed to disappear.
Certainly at first, the issue of race was something that Mr Obama preferred not to talk about. His speeches on the topic usually came only after events forced him to address it.
In the last year, Mr Obama has become more vocal about issues facing the black community. His “Brother’s Keeper” initiative seeks to improve outcomes for young black men in America – outcomes like the fate of Michael Brown, shot dead in the street a few days before he was to start college.
Big questions that seemed to be swept under the post-racial rug are being asked once again: Why was an overwhelmingly black area policed by predominantly white officers? Why is there such mistrust among that community of the forces of law and order? Why, if you’re black, are you much more likely to be a victim of crime? Why, if you’re black, are you much more likely to end up in prison? Why are you more likely to be unemployed?
The president engaged in that debate on Monday night, saying that the situation in Ferguson spoke to broader challenges that the US faced. He acknowledged that some of this was the legacy of racial discrimination. He said violence could never be justified, but recognised that the legal system often felt as if it was being applied in a discriminatory fashion.
The violence in Ferguson was as awful as it was predictable. There were those in the crowd who had clearly come dressed for a fight, and would have been disappointed if they had gone home without one.
And there will be those politicians, who will use that violence by the mob as an excuse for inaction. There is nothing easier than to condemn the troublemakers and wilfully ignore the message that the angry but peaceful protesters are trying to send. And – boy – if you could sell anger, you would make a fortune in Ferguson. The fury is genuine.
Some are invoking the Selma marches and Martin Luther King, and saying that the civil rights movement is as relevant today as it was in the last century
Though an infamous race riot in St Louis left dozens of black Americans dead in 1917, modern-day Ferguson wasn’t on many radar screens as a potential flashpoint for racial violence – until the shooting of Michael Brown. It’s in one of the so-called flyover states: a place that many Americans travel above as they fly from east to west or the other way.
The uncomfortable question for America is how many other towns and cities across the land have exactly the same cocktail of problems that one spark could ignite?
Last night we learned the faith of the Grand Jury decision on the shooting of Michael Brown and I for one for the first time ever was ashamed to be a US citizen. I did something I thought I would never do as someone who gave up twenty-eight weeks of my life seven days a week, sixteen hours a day free to have President Obama’s re-elected emailed The White House and asked the President to resign. For one reason and one reason only and it is well documented in my interviews so I could be involved in his re-election campaign and that was his lack of concern or action on the Civil Rights issues and banks. President Obama has done nothing whatsoever on both of these issues and as a Democrat this bugs me a lot.
I can speak with authority as my niece and nephew are African-American through adoption and also even though I served the President of the United States re-election campaign in 2012 I have provided proof to the FBI, the Department of Justice, The White House and Senator Dianne Feinstein that a Police force
within Marin County and the LAPD have an illegal murder squad and was anything ever done about this? No, is the answer. The Department of Justice in Washington DC practically abused me for even daring to try and bring this proof forward. Did the main stream media like CBS or CNN do anything? No, is the answer and the reason is we as Americans believe that our Police forces do serve and protect but that is our ignorance and we get what we deserve but did Michael Brown get what he deserved?
What ever about the rumors on line that Police Officer Wilson who shot Michael Brown was a Freemason and personally in the twenty-first century I find all these Freemason stuff so boring. In America (unlike Europe) we will never accept free education and free healthcare. We will never accept that a human being should have the right to have a roof over their heads or food in their stomachs without working for it and we don’t care if there are no jobs, that is who we are. But we should never accept what is going with our Police forces in the US as they are being paid to serve and protect all it’s citizens, black, white, Asian, homeless, rich, poor, mentally ill, disabled, elderly.
Tamir Rice, a twelve year boy who looked liked my adopted nephew was shot dead by Police this weekend in Cleveland, Ohio waving a fake gun. Does it ever end? No, is the answer. Our Police system in the US doesn’t work anymore in the twenty-first century and our President who I gave so much to get re-elected has done nothing in his six years of office but wheel Police Officers out in The White House for yet another award. Next time he does it, maybe he will contemplate on the pictures we all had to look at on line of Michael Brown’s body laying in the swelter sun for four hours for all passers by to see and record on their cellphones. Should not of President Obama spoke up then? Yes. But maybe it is our fault as the race issue is forever in the shadows of our society and we should just be honest and frank with ourselves that we are not doing a great job dealing with it.
The list is endless from Oscar Grant in 2009 and Charles Hill (a man I talked to regularly on my way to work at the Civic Centre/UN Plaza Muni and Bart Stations) in 2011, both San Francisco homeless men and both shot to death by Bart Police Officers. What really set off the protests to Hill’s death is that Police Officer who shot him dead was allowed to transfer the following week to the FBI as an FBI agent. And it is the job of the FBI to investigate Police Officers who commit serious crimes against the very people they are paid to serve and protect? See why it is all nonsense and none of these people’s families will ever see justice until the new Congress acts in January 2015 with new and very strong Police control laws to protect the rights of every citizen not just the wealthy or privileged.
My point of all this, is that Hilary Clinton must now come forward and speak out even if it will hurt Obama. My first girlfriend’s family live in Kirkwood, St. Louis and when I was dating her we drove through Ferguson. I am worried as I am sure she is, about her elderly parents during all this unrest the World is now witnessing and when you have the Secretary-General of the UN tonight calling on US law enforcement officials to protect the rights of people to demonstrate peacefully it is time the new Congress in January 2015 brought in new and strong Police control laws across the United States as their first order of business.
What will hurt Hillary Clinton is if she doesn’t come out and speak now with what is happening in Ferguson and what happened in Cleveland last weekend . If anyone deserves to win in 2016 it is Hillary and we all know why. She invented the proper Affordable Care Act back in the 1990s. She stood by her husband Bill
when many would have walked away and then in 2008 the Democrat Party shafting her with those super delegates votes giving the 2012 Democratic candidacy to Obama. But last night’s decision by the Grand Jury must of being very hard for her because if she doesn’t come out and rightly so attack President Obama on this issue, the Republicans will throw this at her during the 2016 Presidential campaign.
I also pointed out to President Obama that every time he uses Air Force One it costs the tax payers over five million dollars. These days must end as we see such a change in Europe on this every issue. I as a volunteer for Obama’s Organizing For America (OFA) had to acquire loans from my amazing bank Manager in San Francisco to pay from my own pocket for the Obama re-election campaign for ink and paper for the whole team during huge vote calling drives every week. Did any of my team ever get paid employment with OFA or in Obama’s White House as they were promised? No. And I received hundreds of insulting emails looking for donations (even tonight) from OFA? For what? A memorial fund for Michael Brown’s family? No. To keep paying OFA staff’s salaries even when it is past their exit date from their position. That’s it, isn’t it? About us Americans and politics, it is all about the green and nothing else.
To hear the President last night appealing for calm makes even the avert support want to scream. This is not about you Mr. President, this is about Michael Brown and the senseless end of his life over a few stolen cigars. I plead with you get angry and show us that emotion publicly and sign an Executive Order in the memory of Michael Brown and Tamir Rice for if you don’t and I don’t believe you will, you will really hurt Hillary Clinton chances in the 2016 Presidential Election.
The Amazing Democrats 