What's Up With Hillary Clinton?

What's Up With Hillary Clinton?

I have been paying attention to Hillary Clinton my whole adult life. No politician I have ever watched has ever gone through what I see her going through and yet she is still standing.

 

Occasional Repost: The GOP Invited Dems to a Red Wedding, the Dems Obliged

We occasionally repost amazing articles from friends who hit the mark, perfectly. Here is David Phillips take on The Great Democalypse that was the 2014 midterms.

Red Wedding In The Capitol

A Red Wedding.

In Game of Thrones speak, this refers to a scene in the HBO series where the King of the North, his wife, and his mother--along with everyone else in their camp--is led into a trap based around a wedding meant to draw the two warring sides together in peace. The king and his crew let their guard down. They relax and believe that everything will turn out just fine. What follows is a massive bloodletting orchestrated by Lord Walder Frey where no one is spared--not even the honorable king's unborn child. It is a gruesome bit of television that has already taken its place in tube lore. It couldn't compare to what happened Tuesday night in the 2014 Midterms. The Senate flipped, the House got housed, and the guvnas got guvna'd.

Still, to spring this trap on unsuspecting Democrats, Lords McConnell, Boehner, Priebus, and Christie needed the unwitting compliance of two groups of people. Democratic voters and pols. They could not have asked for more.

If showing up is 80% of life, as it has often been attributed to Woody Allen, the Democratic voter was well short of that. Somehow, this happens nearly every midterm election and yet the left seems to never learn that the progress often made in presidential election years must be consecrated two years later. It's a common refrain that Democratic voters are lazy. Nothing about last night will make that refrain less common anytime soon. As usual, the electorate in this off-year election was paler, maler, and staler than in presidential years and again, Democrats paid the cost of too many of their flock only being interested in the big show every four years.

As well, we Democrats are an easily dispirited bunch. Susceptible to disappointment and wanting to punish our party for not doing enough while not recognizing the alternative to our way of thinking is more reliable and therefore more than willing to fill the void during our off-year siestas. This lurching back and forth from election to election is made possible not just by the Right's efforts to disenfranchise minorities and young people--although that's certainly a factor--but by our own occasional lack of interest. And if you think voter ID laws are making it harder to get the base to the polls now, just consider the contests for Governor we lost last night. Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts Florida, Maine, Wisconsin and perhaps Colorado are either flipping and going R or are staying that way. All in states that should be either slam dunks (IL, MD, MA) or at least competitive (the rest). Does anyone think it's going to get any easier to access the ballot box in any of these states now?

PAUSE: If any Democratic leader ever lets Martha Coakley (two time loser in sky blue Massachusetts) or Charlie Crist (who has now lost as a Republican, an Independent, and a Democrat) run for office under their banner again, please push them into traffic. RESUME.

As well, many on the left are feeling less than inspired by our current President. We buy into the fears over ISIS and Ebola, even though not a single American has died from either on domestic soil. We are displeased with the rate of economic growth even though we are outpacing every other first world nation post Bush II's Crash of 2008. We don't think he's done enough on immigration, disentangling us from overseas conflicts, and too much on privacy invasion and national security in general. There are reasonable arguments to be made in each of these cases. They are not won by not voting. Even if you think Obama's merely the lesser of two evils, when presented with the two, what idiot would not take that which would harm you the least?

Not to mention, all the state and local issues we failed to represent for Tuesday night. Even if your congressional vote was hopeless (as mine was), would you not at least want to mitigate the damage by at minimum, keeping your own backyard short of insanity? Don't get me wrong, the average voter in even the red states on election night was pretty strange. By and large voting 'yea' on liberal issues such as the legalization of marijuana and raising the minimum wage, while also voting for candidates who oppose both, but we already know these types vote against their own interests. At least they can be bothered to turn out, no matter how much head scratching ensues by us thinking types afterwards.

As irresponsible as the left leaning non-voter was last night, it's quite possible our candidates were even worse. Nearly all of them ran away from any sort of accomplishment Democrats may have won over the last six years. An improving, if fitful economy. A health care law that is literally addressing the needs of millions of people while also bringing down costs, and a country that is embroiled in fewer major conflicts and has not had one terror attack take place in this country from anyone outside of the occasional lone wolf. That's a story one could tell...if one were willing to tell it. See, when you act embarrassed by that which you have achieved, not only does it show, but your avoidance of those successes allows your foe to define those achievements as anything but. Therefore, you had a lot of politicians with a (D) by their name running on...what the fuck I don't know.

A perfect example is Mark Warner of Virginia. A former very popular Governor of Virginia who won his Senate seat in 2008 with more than 60% of the popular vote. This year, he had to scrape by former Bushie, Ed Gillespie, whom the Republicans (thankfully) barely bothered to fund. Warner was once a short lister for VP and even, in some circles, discussed as a future top of the ticket possibility. Tell me this though, what the fuck does anyone know about Mark Warner? What significant piece of legislation has he ever been attached to? Did anyone in Virginia even know what Warner was running on? Much like Indiana's former nondescript Democratic Governor and Senator, Evan Bayh, the only thing I know about Warner is he wins elections--if this year, only just.

Too many Democratic candidates ran this sort of safe race about nothing last night. Some were even worse. Many of those up for a vote on election day pretended we didn't even have a two-time electoral landslide winning Democratic President of the United States until they were asked directly about him. Then they turned into "See and Says." Only instead of pulling the string and having them--like the toy--say "the cow goes moo" or "the rooster goes cockadoodledoo," the candidate went "I disagree with the president" with every jerk of the chain.

Even worse, Senate candidate in Kentucky, Alison Lundergan Grimes, when asked whether she voted for the president she served as a state delegate for in 2012, fell only one denial short of a Peter/Jesus relationship with her party's standard-bearer. This was the norm for the Democratic candidate in 2014. Take credit for nothing, run on nothing, and when asked about your relationship with a guy who knows how to win elections, speak as if that guy was nothing too. The funny thing is, you know who that guy was more popular than? Both chambers of congress.

This sort of weak-kneed campaigning led to Republicans overachieving everywhere. Even in the few places Dems pulled out a win. Take New Hampshire, where the relatively popular former Governor and current Senator, Jeanne Shaheen, barely outpaced the carpetbagging former Senator from Massachusetts, Scott Brown. A candidate so committed to his new state, he could hardly admit to any interest in staying in it should he lose. I don't know what all Mid-Atlantic states have Dems up for the Senate in 2016, but I do suggest they start their opposition research on Brownie now, just in case.

To these short sighted pols, I would like to ask, what did this "safe" strategy net you? Dems lost to a turtle in Kentucky, a man afraid of a circular fan in Florida, and a proud castrator of hogs in Iowa. I'll now share with you my favorite gallows-humored tweet of the night from former Daily Show correspondent, Wyatt Cenac: "For all the Democratic candidates that campaigned by distancing themselves from the President... it worked. They will be nowhere near him."

I will say this for Democratic non-voters and candidates, you did accomplish something unexpected last night. You made a lame duck President more relevant than anyone could have anticipated. Now he's all that stands between you and the policies you despise. I'm sure that's what you had in mind while watching the electoral map run red like the floor of Walder Frey's banquet room.

David Phillips

Mitch McConnell Campaign Manager Outed For Bribery, Steps Down

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell

Kent Sorenson is just bad news for the Republican Party, and the fallout of the recent news about him has spread all the way to Mitch McConnell's current re-election campaign.

On August 27th, 2014, former Iowa State Senator Kent Sorenson pled guilty in Federal Court admitting to two charges of taking bribes during the Iowa Caucuses for his endorsement of Ron Paul. Sorenson is now facing between 5 years and 25 years in prison, and a $500,000 fine. He also pleaded guilty to working with the Ron Paul campaign to lie about the $73,000 bribe that was given to him by Ron Paul's campaign manager. When the campaign presented their expenditures, disclosing them in a federal document, Sorenson lied about the money from the campaign, saying they were payments for some film company work. 

How did we get here? Let's go back to the presidential race for the GOP ticket in 2012.

Bachmann in Iowa
(G. Skidmore/wiki images, 2011)

It was 6 days before the Iowa Caucuses in the winter of 2011, and there was a dramatic development that really shook up the poll takers. Republican State Senator Kent Sorenson had been serving as an Iowa State Co-Chair for Michelle Bachmann. Ron Paul was in first place or second place, depending on which poll you read. Michelle Bachmann was catching up. And 6 days before the Iowa Caucus, Kent Sorenson, Bachmann's Co-Chair for Iowa, switched teams. He showed up during the day at a Michelle Bachmann event, but that evening he was introduced at a Ron Paul event as 'the incredible Senator who switched sides at the last moment', and, just like that, Sorenson was now part of the "Ron Paul Revolution."

There were rumors of a big sum of money switching hands in order for this defection to take place. And there were emails too. There are emails from Kent Sorenson to the Ron Paul campaign saying how much he wanted to be bribed to switch sides. There are recorded phone calls confirming the bribe.

Of course, when someone gets bribed, there is always a briber. Who was it that did the bribing? Who gave him the check? After all, you can't bribe yourself can you? Who was in charge of the Ron Paul campaign finances when this was happening?

In fact, the courting of Sorenson by the Paul campaign began in October 2011, a few months before his Bachmann defection and subsequent public endorsement of Congressman Paul. On October 29, 2011, a memo was drafted outlining the benefits the Paul campaign would receive by meeting Sorenson’s financial demands. One of those benefits was the acquisition of a list of identified voters who were planning on voting for Michele Bachmann. Sorenson also offered up the e-mail list for the “main home-school group” in Iowa. Of course, State Senator Sorenson denied it at the time. Ron Paul said "that did not happen'. Jessie Benton, Ron Paul's campaign manager, didn't comment.

Who was that email with Sorenson's demand sent to? Who was it again that was in charge of Ron Paul's financial matters during the 2012 campaign? Who signed the $73,000 check? That would be none other than Ron Paul's actual campaign manager, of course, Jessie Benton, and in a dingy local restaurant, in an afternoon in December (2011), 8 days before the Iowa Caucus, a Ron Paul staffer apparently slipped Sorenson an envelope with a big check in it. With Jessie Benton's John Hancock, Sorenson's support was insured, and two days later Sorenson announced his endorsement for Ron Paul.

A week later, Michelle Bachmann finished sixth in the Iowa Caucuses, and then left the presidential race.

Cut to Feb. 2013, when a former Bachmann staffer complained to state officials that State Senator Kent Sorenson had taken a bribe from Bachmann to work for the Bachmann campaign back in 2011. This guy was apparently an equal opportunity bribee. There was an investigation, and the state ethics commission found the claim of bribery to be substantiated. The guy in the Bachmann camp who wrote the check stepped down from his Senatorial office, mumbling something about gay marriage in an email to supporters explaining the exit. Seriously. And elected official Sorenson remained at large and uncharged.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, however, and the Federal Election Commission, and the Office of Congressional Ethics continued to look into the matter.

With the Bachmann briber taken care of, in March of 2014, the commission investigating these bribery charges turned their spotlight back to the 2012 Ron Paul campaign. There was an investigation and a grand jury. Former State Senator cum Campaign Manager Kent Sorenson's records were studied, producing a 500-page report, eventually finding that $73,000 had been paid to Sorenson in wire transfers. Deeply suspicious wire transfers. Was this the smoking gun? Was Sorenson finally going to be caught for taking bribes? Yes.

Former Mitch McConnell campaign manager, Jessie Benton

Iowa State Senator Kent Sorenson admitted in Federal Court to taking bribes during the Iowa Caucuses for his endorsement of Ron Paul and to working with the Ron Paul campaign to lie about the $73,000 bribe. We won't be seeing Sorenson at any campaign rallies for a bit now.

Early this year, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was quite proud to announce he had brought Jessie Benton (Ron Paul's old campaign manager) on board as his re-election campaign manager. Woohoo. Great catch Mitch. (A recording went public last year of Benton saying, I'm "holding my nose" going to work for the Senate minority leader’s campaign.)

The morning of August 29th, 2014, a McConnell spokesperson said in a statement that “Sen. McConnell obviously has nothing to do with the Iowa presidential caucus, or this investigation, so it would be inappropriate for his campaign to comment on this situation.” After all, McConnell is locked in a tight re-election battle against Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, and if Republicans can take back the Senate, McConnell may take the majority leader's seat.

Benton, who many refer to as a tea party insider, claims that he has been the target of "inaccurate press accounts and unsubstantiated media rumors" about his role in past campaigns that are "politically motivated, unfair and, most importantly, untrue." Fun Fact: Turns out Jessie Benton is actually Ron Paul’s grandson-in-law, and was expected to run Rand Paul’s campaign in 2016. On news dump Friday before the Labor Day 3-day weekend, as quietly as possible, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s campaign manager, Jesse Benton, announced his resignation, citing "potential distractions over renewed attention to a scandal from the Iowa 2012 caucuses."


The Policy Geek