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,
It all started with an interview with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly that ran Monday. In it, Kelly asked Bush whether “knowing what we know now,” he would have authorized the use of force against Iraq. Here how he responded:
“I would have and so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody. And so would almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got. In retrospect, the intelligence that everybody saw — that the world saw, not just the United States — was faulty. And in retrospect, once we invaded and took out Saddam Hussein, we didn’t focus on security first, and the Iraqis in this incredibly insecure environment turned on the United States military because there was no security for themselves and their families.
Um, okay”.
My initial read on those comments was that Bush was either (a) unbelievably politically tone-deaf or (b) had misheard the question.
Since I know that Bush is not politically tone-deaf, option “b” was the only one that made any sense.
And, judging from Bush’s answer, there seems to be plenty of evidence to support the idea that he heard Kelly asking whether he would have voted to use force against Iraq back then — without hearing (or understanding) the “knowing what we know now” part of the question. In his answer, Bush documents then-New York. Sen. Hillary Clinton’s vote for the use of force resolution and then admits that the intelligence leading up to the war was eventually proven to be “faulty.” That’s not the sort of statement a politician gives if he thinks that the country should have gone to war in Iraq even knowing what we know now.
Then came this from Bush adviser Ana Navarro on CNN Tuesday: “I e-mailed him this morning and I said to him, ‘Hey, I’m a little confused by this answer so I’m genuinely wondering did you mishear the question?’ And he said, ‘Yes, I misheard the question.’ ”
Bush’s campaign didn’t answer e-mails seeking clarification of all of this, although they did point reporters (okay, me) tothis clip of Kelly saying Bush misheard the question.
Bush is also scheduled to appear on conservative commentator Sean Hannity’s radio show today.
There seems roughly a 100 percent chance that Bush will use that platform to clarify a position that enraged conservatives. And it’s a near-certainty that he will lean on the explanation that he simply misheard the question. Which, as I note above, is totally consistent with the answer he gave.
But mishearing or not, the hubbub caused by Bush’s answer — both among conservatives and Democrats, who seized on it — shows just how careful Jeb has to be when talking about his brother. This is the second incident in the past week – the first was when Jeb said George W. was one of his main advisers on Israel policy — where the legacy of the first brother Bush is creating controversy and problems for his younger sibling.
There are two realities at work here: (1) Jeb is George W.’s brother, and (2) Jeb does not want to be cast as a third George W. term. Distancing yourself from a less-than-popular politician of your own party is a difficult thing to do no matter what. (See Al Gore and Bill Clinton circa 2000.) That goes quadruple (or more) when that politician is your brother.
This mixup — and I genuinely think that’s what we are dealing with on the Iraq question — reveals why having the last name “Bush” is a genuine issue for Jeb in 2016. There will be a tendency to always assume the worst when it comes to him and his brother.
On a mid-November Monday, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) signed into law the largest corporate tax break in any state’s history, with an estimated lifetime value of $8.7 billion. The package was the result of a special three-day session Inslee called in order to entice Boeing to build its 777X plane in the state.
Boeing didn’t just score big that day. The aerospace giant has received more state and local subsidy dollars than any other corporation in America, according to newly released data compiled by Good Jobs First, a policy resource center on subsidy data. The state subsidy data was released Tuesday in conjunction with similar federal data and a matching report — “Uncle Sam’s Favorite Corporations” — which reviews the grants, loans and other subsidies distributed by the federal government since 2000.
Over the course of those 15 years, the federal government has distributed $68 billion in grants and special tax credits to businesses, with two-thirds of that transferred to large corporations. Six companies have received $1 billion or more, while 21 have received $500 million or more.
“We now see that big business dominates federal subsidy spending the way it does state and local programs,” Philip Mattera, a co-author of the study, said in a news release. The largest recipient of federal grants and tax credits was a Spanish energy company, Iberdrola, which received the federal subsidies by “investing heavily in U.S. power generation facilities,” Good Jobs First reported.
The database, which the group touts as the first comprehensive accounting of federal subsidy awards, contains new records on more than 164,000 awards from 137 federal programs and expands on data collected by the group since 2010.
The time period covered by the state and local data is less consistent. Because open-records laws differ by state, the amount and extent of information obtained by Good Jobs First varies. Most is from the last 15 years, but some extends even further back, Mattera said.
Of all the state and local subsidy dollars tracked, half went to the top 30 companies, led by Boeing. The aerospace giant alone has received $13 billion in subsidies. Chip-maker Intel and metal giant Alcoa each received nearly $6 billion. General Motors scored $3.7 billion, and Ford secured $2.5 billion. All told, 19 large corporations have received at least $1 billion.
Some big corporations are also big double- and triple-dippers in federal and state funds.
Five corporations have achieved a trifecta, ranking among the 50 largest recipients of three kinds of funds: state subsidies; federal grants and tax credits; and federal loans, loan guarantees and bailout assistance. Those businesses, which Good Jobs First defines as the “most successful at obtain in subsidies from all levels of government” are Boeing, Ford Motor, General Electric, General Motors and JPMorgan Chase.
Another six — Dow Chemical, Lockheed Martin, NRG Energy, Sempra Energy, SolarCity and United Technologies — are among the top 50 recipients of state subsidies and federal grants. Goldman Sachs is among the largest recipients of state subsidies and federal loan assistance.
Some businesses double-dipped in other ways, too. Of the hundred most profitable federal contractors in the 2014 fiscal year, nearly half have received federal grants or tax credits since 2000.
A bit of sunlight poking through the darkness on Wall Street (jk there is no darkness on Wall Street): The average bonus for a Wall Street employee ticked up again in 2014, hitting $172,860 according to analysis from the New York state comptroller. That sum isn’t a recent peak; before the recession, Wall Streeters were getting $225,000 in 2014 dollars.
That’s enough to give the maximum 2014 contribution to 66 members of Congress, should the Wall Streer bonusers have wanted to. And seeing as how contributions from the finance, insurance and real estate industries in 2014 hit nearly half a billion dollars, it’s safe to assume that some of this cash will make its way to Washington. (It may also explain why Jeb Bush just hired a Wall Street executive to help guide his campaign policy)
The $172,860 figure may not be a recent peak, but it is still more than three times the median household income in America. And that’s just the bonus — not the salaries these Wall Street workers earn.
Another comparison to regular America: The average Wall Street bonus used to be about one-ninth of the median price of a new home. These days, two Wall Streeters could pool their bonuses and buy a house together, and have some money left over. (Not a house near Wall Street, mind you, but the $172,000 would certainly cover a lot of the rent.)
If Jeb actually did want to hit the much-pooh-poohed $100 million fundraising goal, he’d only need 579 Wall Street workers to turn over their bonuses. Last year alone, Wall Street added 2,300 new employees. So maybe raising $100 million isn’t as hard as it looked.
For the last two weeks we sat and watched and hoped in our heart of hearts that Hillary’s “people” would handle this whole personal email issue better and were we disappointed? That would be an understatement. We have to be fair, when Mitt Romney in the 2012 campaign make an error or we learned something about him and he went on the defensive, we jumped all over him. Now Hillary and her “people” are on the defensive we will speak our minds. What she did as Secretary of State using a personal email address for her work was not only arrogant but plain stupid and Hillary should have known better. You can be sure her personnel in the State Department would certainly have pointed this out to her from time to time, only to be ignored.
What we have said consistently is Hillary needs to drop her old team and re-invent her image when she announces (which now needs to be brought forward and if she doesn’t this email story will hurt her Presidential chances even more) that she is running for President in 2016. Going on the defensive is weak and un-American and voters simply shy away from a candidate who goes on the track. That’s how we beat Mitt Romney if you remember, in 2012. When he made major errors, he went on the defensive and we pounced. Jeb Bush and the Republicans are doing just that now with Hillary and Emailgate. When President Obama was a candidate in 2008 and Reverent Wright embarrassed him, he did the right thing and so did his “people” working on his campaign, he hit the controversy head on as he did with rumors with the purchase of his Chicago home and as he did with his birth certificate issue. He hit them all head on and moved on and so did the media and the American public. Hillary needs to learn this as it looks like we have a first 2016 Presidential campaign of only “Gold Spoon Candidates”. What I don’t hear from either Hillary’s or Jeb Bush’s “people” is how hard it is now for middle class America families to survive financially since the melt down in 2008. Yes, employment has grown but salaries have not increased, Labor Unions are being weaken, voters rights are being eroded in certain States, the homeless in our major cities (run by Democrats) have grown such serious levels (and no one cares) and Swore Police Officers still shoot unarmed African-Americans even when they are naked and have served in the Air Force as we saw this week in Georgia. Basically, it’s business as usual in the United States of America. What the Democrat politicians in office miss (like the Republicans) is the waste of time and taxpayers’ money on issues of arrogance, as in the case of Hillary’s Emailgate.
This stupidity is going to cost time and money for the State Department’s staff that is going to have to wade through thousands of Hillary’s emails (which today the State Department said could weeks, maybe months and not days). This again is irresponsibility of Hillary Clinton as once again the hard working taxpayer in the United States gets no apology for the costs of wading through her thousands of emails sent and received from her personal email account for State Department business. It is like we have stated in the past regarding the incredible disregard for the taxpayers’ hard earned dollars that every time the President uses Air Force One within the United States for a “fundraiser”, it costs the US taxpayer five million dollars each time he steps on that aircraft. How many homeless people would that assist to get off the streets of our major cities? Not to mention all the small government jets we provide to Federal officials, the costs in total yearly are mind numbing.
What Hillary needs to do now, is announce if she is running or not (sorry Hillary, Emailgate has finished that choice for you once and for all) and dump that team she has since 2008. Then Hillary needs to get out and start doing the talk show rounds explaining her actions and apologizing to the people of the United States for that arrogant and stupid decision to use her personal email address instead of a supplied government email address when she was the Secretary of State.
It’s that’s simply as maybe, just maybe there is another unheard Democrat candidate for the 2016 Presidential race in the wings who will see this as a chance to jump forward as Obama did in 2008 and there is no doubt Hillary’s Emailgate has hurt Hillary. Even more worrying is the way this whole issue has being handled and that has damaged Hillary and her team even further as well as handing Jeb Bush and the Republicans a lot of mileage on this issue that will not go away lightly and they will ensure that it doesn’t go away for a very, very long time. That’s not smart politics for someone so experienced and seasoned as Hillary Clinton. Hillary’s Emailgate will come back to haunt her and her 2016 Presidential campaign again and again if the Republicans play their cards right, which I am sure they will.
(c) Editor for The Amazing Democrats (Los Angeles). March 11, 2015
The Amazing Democrats 