Archive for the ‘US Senate’ 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.
Robert Costa (The Washington Post)
When asked this week at an exclusive Manhattan gathering about who advises him on U.S.-Israel policy, Jeb Bush surprised many of the 50-plus attendees by naming his brother, former president George W. Bush, as his most influential counselor.
“If you want to know who I listen to for advice, it’s him,” Bush said Tuesday, speaking to a crowd of high-powered financiers at the Metropolitan Club, according to four people present.
The remark came as part of an answer to a question about Bush’s political advisers and their policy views. Bush was pressed for details about who he surrounds himself with and consults as he thinks through his positions, guests said.
The Republicans in the room spoke on the condition of anonymity to divulge information about the proceedings, where confidentiality was insisted upon by the event’s host, GOP mega-donor Paul Singer.
Embracing his brother as a foreign policy confidant is a risky and unexpected move for the former Florida governor as he readies for a likely presidential run. While George W. Bush’s approval ratings have improved since he left office in 2009, his foreign policy legacy — particularly the long war in Iraq — remains deeply unpopular. He has also become anathema to some conservative activists for presiding over an increase in the federal debt, among other policies.
As he has explored a 2016 campaign for the White House, Jeb Bush has sought to create distance from the family political brand. While Bush has not criticized his brother, he rarely cites him as his guide on policies. And George W. Bush said last month that he planned to stay away from the campaign trail because voters do not like political dynasties.
Jeb Bush’s revelation that he regularly speaks with his brother about Israel also indicates that the siblings may be closer than often portrayed. The relationship is often described as cordial and warm but distant on policy matters.
Tim Miller, a spokesman, played down the significance of Bush’s comment.
“Governor Bush has said before that his brother is the greatest ally to Israel in presidential history, he admires his stalwart support for our ally, and that is in line with his commitment to standing with Israel in the face of great threats to their security and our own,” Miller said in a statement Thursday.
Singer, a hedge-fund billionaire, and his advisers organized the session for their associates to hear from Bush. Similar meetings have been held with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina, three of Bush’s potential rivals in the 2016 race.
The question that led to Bush’s response was about how much he relied on former secretary of state James Baker, a respected party figure and longtime Bush family friend, but one angered conservative Republican hawks in March when he addressed the left-leaning pro-Israel advocacy group J Street. During his keynote speech, Baker criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not backing a two-state solution.
Bush said that he respected Baker, but maintained that he is not part of his foreign policy team and then noted that one person he routinely looks to for guidance on Israel and related matters is his brother.
Bush also expressed regret for the way he has unveiled his staff hires and list of advisers and said the lengthy list he made public in February, which included Baker, was not an accurate representation of who he reaches out to when he’s considering Israel-related issues.
Participants said the reception at the club was mostly encouraging, but one attendee said he was “stunned” to hear Jeb Bush specifically mention George W. Bush as his go-to adviser. “I started looking around and wondering if people were recording it. It was jarring,” the attendee said. “If video of it got out, it’d be devastating.”
Others saw it differently.
“It was a very positive response, just based on faces around the room,” a second attendee said. “There didn’t seem to be any sort of negative reaction.”
A majority of registered voters still have unfavorable views of how George W. Bush handled his job as president, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll in March. Nevertheless, there remains deep affection in the GOP for George W. Bush, with 87 percent approving of his presidential tenure.
Last month, the former president drew enthusiastic reviews for his appearance before the Republican Jewish Coalition, where he answered questions about his time in the White House and his post-presidency.
Peyton Craighill contributed to this report.
by NOAM SCHEIBER (New York Times)
WASHINGTON — Early this year, Megan E. Green, a St. Louis alderwoman, met with officials of a local police union to discuss a proposal for a civilian oversight board that would look into accusations of police misconduct. After Ms. Green refused to soften her support for the proposal, the union backed an aggressive mailing campaign against her.
But Ms. Green won her primary with over 70 percent of the vote, and the Board of Aldermen approved the oversight board by a large margin. “All that stuff backfired,” Ms. Green said. “The more they attacked me for it, the more people seemed to rally around me.”
During the urban crime epidemic of the 1970s and ’80s and the sharp decline in crime that began in the 1990s, the unions representing police officers in many cities enjoyed a nearly unassailable political position. Their opposition could cripple political candidates and kill police-reform proposals in gestation.
But amid a rash of high-profile encounters involving allegations of police overreach in New York, Baltimore, Cleveland, Ferguson, Mo., and North Charleston, S.C., the political context in which the police unions have enjoyed a privileged position is rapidly changing. And the unions are struggling to adapt.
“There was a time in this country when elected officials — legislators, chief executives — were willing to contextualize what police do,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a former New York City police officer and prosecutor who now teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “And that time is mostly gone.”
In Baltimore, the local police union president accused protesters angry at the death of Freddie Gray of participating in a “lynch mob.” In South Carolina, the head of the police union where an officer had shot and killed an unarmed black man who was fleeing fulminated against “professional race agitators.” In New York, Patrick Lynch, a local police union chief, accused Mayor Bill de Blasio of having blood on his hands after the shooting death of two police officers last December.
If voters’ reactions to Mr. Lynch’s statements are any indication, the provocative language has largely served to alienate the public and isolate the police politically. According to a Quinnipiac University poll in January, 77 percent of New York City voters disapproved of Mr. Lynch’s comments. Sixty-nine percent disapproved of police officers turning their backs on Mr. de Blasio at funerals for the two slain officers, a protest seen as orchestrated by the union.
In Baltimore, too, the police union has been less than sure-footed in navigating the more hostile political terrain of the past few years. The union, Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3, has responded with open resistance to Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s proposals to make it easier to remove misbehaving police officers, and to give the city’s police civilian review board a “more impactful” role in disciplining officers.
The union also opposed the decision by Ms. Rawlings-Blake and Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts to invite the Justice Department in to help overhaul the city’s Police Department after an investigation by The Baltimore Sun produced numerous allegations of police brutality.
Union officials say they have been fulfilling their mandate to protect their members, airing legitimate concerns about overreach on the part of their civilian overseers. And sympathetic observers have questioned the political motivations of the mayor.
“She seems to suggest that the blame lies elsewhere, when the buck should stop with the mayor, always,” Mr. O’Donnell said. “She’s been there five years. The thing is an institutional disaster. It’s your institution.”
A spokesman for the mayor said that some of her efforts, like disbanding a plainclothes unit linked to an unusual number of excessive-force complaints, began shortly after she took office.
In some cases, the union’s hostility to scrutiny has been self-defeating. In 2014, the Fraternal Order of Police declined to endorse Gregg Bernstein, then the state’s attorney for Baltimore, after members of the union’s endorsement committee complained that Mr. Bernstein had been too aggressive in prosecuting police misconduct, according to two people briefed on the discussions.
Mr. Bernstein, who suffered from diminishing support in districts where the union has long been influential, lost his re-election bid to the current state’s attorney, Marilyn J. Mosby, who has made prosecuting police misconduct a priority. Ms. Mosby recently charged six Baltimore police officers in the death of Mr. Gray, the resident whose death last month set off tumultuous protests around the city.
St. Louis offers a particularly vivid example of the inability of police unions to update their tactics amid widespread frustration with policing. The St. Louis Board of Aldermen first passed a measure creating a civilian oversight board back in 2006. Mayor Francis G. Slay, a Democrat, vetoed the bill at the time, citing its “inflammatory antipolice” language and questioning whether it would survive a legal challenge given that the State of Missouri still formally controlled the local Police Department.
But, in December, after months of outrage following the shooting death of Michael Brown by a police officer in nearby Ferguson, Mr. Slay agreed to support a bill similar to the one he vetoed a decade ago. A spokeswoman for the mayor said that local control of the Police Department now made the bill legally defensible.
The St. Louis Fraternal Order of Police, one of two prominent local unions, was not persuaded. Although the alderman involved in drafting the legislation met with union officials around the same time and asked them for input, the union offered suggestions in writing only on April 13, two days before the board was set to vote on the bill, and far too late to incorporate any of its changes.
“When we met with them in December, I was honestly interested in their thoughts,” said Alderman Terry Kennedy, who sponsored the legislation. “I would have tried to incorporate as much as I could have.” But, Mr. Kennedy said, the union’s objections proved to be a “constantly moving target.”
Jeff Roorda, a spokesman for the union, said that once it became clear that the Board of Aldermen was determined to give the oversight board investigative authority, rather than simply review powers, the union felt it was better to save its reservations for a future legal challenge.
“It put us in a tough spot, to tip our hand about what our legal objections were, telling them how to write legislation within the legal parameters,” Mr. Roorda said. The measure will become law this week.
In contrast to the unions’ hard-line public stance, many can be pragmatic behind the scenes when dealing with prosecutors over individual allegations of misconduct. In Baltimore, for example, there have been several recent instances when the police union declined to fund the legal defense of an officer whose behavior it had concluded was beyond the pale.
“People have the impression, when it comes to police unions, that there’s never an unwarranted case of police abuse,” said Robert Bruno, a professor of labor relations at the University of Illinois. “The public would be surprised by the level of rational behavior on the part of union grievance officers.”
But when it comes to what the unions perceive as larger, institutional threats, they are characteristically unrelenting, even when a more nuanced response might better serve their long-term interests.
There may be no better example than the creation of New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board two decades ago. In September 1992, after a monthslong standoff between the administration of Mayor David N. Dinkins and the city’s police over his proposal for an independent review agency, a union-organized protest degenerated into what the news media called a “riot,” as thousands of police officers overwhelmed barricades blocking the steps of City Hall.
“It was a very bad inning for the unions,” Christopher Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union said. “Most people view that as being the incident that pushed civilian oversight over the line.”
By Philip Rucker (The Washington Post)
Former president Bill Clinton veered into the orbit of his wife’s presidential race Monday — and caused some problems for her in the process.
In an interview with NBC News, a sometimes defensive Clinton said that his family and its foundation have never done anything “knowingly inappropriate” when accepting donations from foreign governments.
He also said he would continue to deliver speeches for which he is paid six figures during his wife’s presidential campaign because “I gotta pay our bills.” Clinton asserted that he had “taken almost no capital gains” over the past 15 years — a claim that does not jibe with public tax returns.
These and other remarks during the interview with NBC’s Cynthia McFadden raised concerns among Clinton associates from New York to Little Rock, who fear that the former president did his wife no favors with the performance. At some points in the interview, he came off sounding churlish and angry, while his remarks on the family’s finances risked making the Clintons seem out of touch, said these friends, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly.
In a statement Monday, the Republican National Committee said Clinton provided “deceptive responses” to questions about the foundation.
When asked whether the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation created perception problems by accepting large sums from foreign companies and governments, Clinton suggested his family was the victim of a double standard. “People should draw their own conclusions. I’m not in politics,” he said. “All I’m saying is the idea that there’s one set of rules for us and another set for everybody else is true.”
He added later, “There has been a very deliberate attempt to take the foundation down.”
Clinton said that no entity gave the foundation money to try to influence his wife while she served as secretary of state. “There is no doubt in my mind that we have never done anything knowingly inappropriate in terms of taking money to influence any kind of American government policy,” he said. “That just hasn’t happened.”
He said his wife has told him, “No one has ever tried to influence me by helping you.”
The foundation’s finances, and particularly its practice of accepting donations from foreign governments, have drawn considerable scrutiny in recent weeks from The Washington Post and other news organizations and in a new book, “Clinton Cash.”
With Hillary Rodham Clinton beginning her campaign for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, the foundation has become fodder for attacks from her opponents, both Democratic and Republican. The Clinton Foundation recently bowed to pressure and announced it would accept foreign donations from only six Western nations and increase transparency by disclosing its donors four times a year instead of annually.
Bill Clinton spoke with NBC from Kenya during his and daughter Chelsea’s annual tour of Africa to visit Clinton Foundation projects that focus on such issues as climate change, public health, conservation, economic growth and empowering women and girls.
“I don’t think there’s anything sinister in trying to get wealthy people in countries that are seriously involved in development to spend their money wisely in a way that helps poor people and lifts them up,” Clinton said.
But he left open the possibility that he would step down from the foundation if his wife is elected president. “I might if I were asked to do something in the public interest that I had an obligation to do,” Clinton told NBC. “Or I might take less of an executive role. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Clinton has earned more than $100 million in speaking fees since leaving the White House, much of it from foreign entities. Asked about his paid speeches, some of which come with a fee of $500,000 or higher, Clinton said, “People like to hear me speak.”
Clinton said it was “laughable” for people to assume that Hillary Clinton couldn’t “relate to the currents of middle-class America because now we have money.”
“I’m grateful for our success,” he said. “But let me remind you: When we moved into the White House, we had the lowest net worth of any family since Harry Truman.”
Tom Hamburger contributed to this report.
By Anne Gearan (The Washington Post)
In a sign of the power of the populist current among Democrats this election cycle, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign is hiring a former top federal regulator known for trying to tighten rules and requirements on Wall Street.
Former Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman Gary Gensler will be the campaign’s chief financial officer, a Democrat with knowledge of the hire said Friday. Gensler’s role was first reported by Bloomberg.
Gensler clashed repeatedly with Wall Street firms, and his hiring is a clear signal to progressive Democrats and others who have rallied to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and her attacks on Wall Street.
Although Warren has said she will not run for president in 2016, she remains the favorite among a powerful minority of activists whose backing Clinton badly wants. Warren herself has said she wants to know more about what Clinton will run on, and has pressed for strong progressive voices to be among those advising the Democratic frontrunner.
Even progressives backing Clinton now want her to demonstrate independence from big corporations and Wall Street, and Clinton appears to be listening. On Tuesday, Clinton used her first campaign appearance to decry income inequality between average American workers and CEOs.
“There’s something wrong when hedge fund managers pay less in taxes than nurses or the truckers I saw on I-80,” she added, in a a reference to her trip by van from New York to Iowa.
Clinton’s aides and outside defenders say her reputation as close to Wall Street owes mostly to her history as a New York senator and that she will not show favoritism now. Still, she is expected to raise millions from people involved in financial services industries.
Gensler was a main driver of the financial rules that became known as the Dodd-Frank Act, which the Obama administration supported. The package became law in 2010, as the nation struggled to recover from the great recession caused partly by fraud and bad practices among financial firms.
“I think it’s fair to say that if you look across the country, the deck is stacked in favor of those already at the top,” Clinton said during her remarks at a rural community college in Iowa.
That “stacked deck” reference echoed the populist theme of the video she released Sunday to announce her campaign, and also echoes a frequent theme Warren stresses.
The Amazing Democrats 