Will Hillary Be Burned in Effigy?
By Doug Porter
California as the setting for the final scene in the dramatic contests between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders got a boost yesterday as both campaigns scheduled events for this weekend in San Diego. Tensions between the two candidates’ supporters have risen in recent days as the primary season draws to a close.
Sanders supporters are planning rallies at Kimball Park in National City on Saturday and Rancho Buena Vista High School Stadium in Vista on Sunday. People will be admitted to Kimbal Park starting at 4:30pm, with candidate’s speech scheduled for 7pm. Attendees to the Vista event will be admitted from 11am, with Sanders taking the stage at 2pm.
Former President Bill Clinton will be appearing at a rally (time and location still TBA, but word is that it’s at Southwestern College) at Bonita Vista High School in Chula Vista at 10:30am on Saturday morning and then at a private fundraiser at The Inn at Rancho Santa Fe at 1:30 p.m.
From KPBS:
“For security reasons, please do not bring bags and limit what you bring to small, personal items like keys and cell phones. Weapons, sharp objects, chairs, and signs or banners on sticks will not be allowed through security,” the [Sanders campaign, but it’s good advice for anybody’s campaign appearance] news release said.
President Clinton and Sanders have both made appearances in San Diego in recent weeks. Clinton spoke at the Balboa Park Club on May 4, where he was greeted by some Sanders supporters.
Sanders spoke at a large public rally on March 22 at the San Diego Convention Center. The crowd size was estimated at 8,800. [it was more like 12,000]
Facebook Isn’t Much Fun Anymore
I voted yesterday; mailed in my ballot before I changed my mind on the main attraction. Visiting social media has become a chore lately as I’m seeing increasingly vitriolic postings from supporters of either Clinton or Sanders. It’s the Sanders ones that bother me.
Bernie supporters are angry about the establishment rigging the game [glad you noticed!] and Clinton supporters are angry about the egregious behavior of some Big Mouths for Bernie [™].
My fellow SDFP columnist Ernie McCray, probably one of the most gentle souls on earth, wrote eloquently not long ago about abuse coming his way from the Clinton camp for his support of Sanders:
For not supporting Hillary Clinton, people like me, including millions of young people, millennials, our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, have been described as naive-unrealistic-shallow-thinking-delusional-idiotic-scumbags – and we’ve been compared to followers of Trump.
I didn’t see it coming, at all, as the insults have come from the kinds of people with whom I’ve been associated politically my entire voting life: 57 years.
You don’t have squint to read between the lines here to realize that he’s not talking about brash young people perhaps being a little too passionate about supporting their candidate.
My math skills lead me to believe that Hillary Clinton will get enough delegates to win the nomination. My history skills lead me to remember that Ms. Clinton was subjected to a lot of not-so-nice words when she refused to quit campaigning at this point in the race back in 2008.
Clinton may win the nomination, but the political processes for future campaigns are likely to change; some states have already adopted new rules for the next time around. The political landscape has changed forever, also. The Sanders grassroots campaign has effectively halted the rightward drift of the center (and the Democratic Party) in US politics.
I absolutely believe that Senator Sanders should stay in the race and concede nothing until the Philadephia convention. The rhetoric coming from his supporters is another matter, however.
See Something? Say Something…
And this wins votes, how?
I’ve reading screeds on Facebook Bernie pages about how there’s no difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (I can think of 11 million people who would beg to differ for starters.)
I’ve seen digitally altered semi-pornographic videos featuring what I’m guessing is their idea of Hillary’s boobs. I’ve seen posts falsely saying Clinton abetted child abuse during her days as a defense attorney, which coincidentally is the implied tale spun in a video posted by the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
It’s one thing that people post this garbage since the pages are open to all. It’s another that so few people bother to challenge it. I, for one, have pushed back. Politely. And I get told off.
Hair on Fire
And then there are the people who literally cough up right wing propaganda, like this smudge from Judicial Watch, largely funded by the Sarah Scaife Foundation. These are same people whose outlandish claims were disproven in the 1990s.
And the people reposting stuff from Glen Beck’s propaganda center. Glen Beck? Do you realize that guy supported a candidate all-but-advocating a theocracy in the US?
And the people with their hair on fire about conspiracies to squelch Bernie voters’ ballots…
Did you know there were 31 cases of voter fraud in Kentucky this week? Mmmm… Thirty-one… that number sounds familiar…. Oh yeah, that’s the total number of confirmed voter fraud cases out of one billion votes cast in a Loyola University study of all US elections in this century.
I have no sympathy for the “the other campaign did bad things” argument coming out of Bernieland. That’s no better than Melania Trump’s saying a journalist incited anti-semitic threats by writing a less-than-flattering profile of her.
Now those who’ve dared to challenge this garbage are supposedly part of The Conspiracy.
We were supposed to be the good guys. I never thought I’d be holding my nose while voting for a democratic socialist.
Here are few choice words from Edwin Lyngar in Salon, a Bernie supporter who says he loves the candidate but won’t be part of destroying this party in the fall.
There’s too much denial, conjecture and nonsense being passed among Sanders supporters. I thought liberals were the voice of evidence and reason? My own, 22-year-old, Bernie-loving son regurgitated conservative talking points to me the other day. “Hillary and Trump are no different,” he said. This is the wet dream of the Trump campaign, to conflate Clinton with an orange buffoon. Hillary has run a good campaign. She is a respected politician with a passionate following—and more votes than my guy. I didn’t escape the Fox News echo chamber just to embrace an equally angry liberal version.
I once wrote that the Sanders revolution reminded me of the Ron Paul campaign, a “revolution” in which I was also deeply enmeshed. Sadly, some Bernie supports would feel right at home at a Paul rally.
Paul is a libertarian-leaning Republican and his supporters were rabid to the point of blindness. They held onto kooky conspiracy theories and an unquenchable rage. Their insistence on purity tore at the foundations of their own ideology. In the end, they hurt no one but themselves. I see too many uncomfortable comparisons between Paul and Sanders supporters. It has become almost a personality cult. Sanders supporters are also in danger of overplaying this moment and doing themselves lasting harm. The Paul movement thought itself invincible, yet whatever happened to that Rand fellow?
Advocate for Bernie
Again, I think that candidate Bernie Sanders has every right to challenge candidate Hillary Clinton on her experience, policy, and willingness to play along with bad people. I expect nothing less.
Hillary Clinton hails from an era when neo-liberalism ran amok. I could rant on for pages about bad things she was associated with, about how she’s hard for a lot of people to trust, about how she’s not likely to stick to a progressive path once elected.
But at this point, what good would it do? The GOP has been throwing shit at her or 25 years. Will anybody’s mind be changed? Does it really make you feel better to spread what is effectively vile gossip?
It’s not the job of supporters to spread smears. “They did it first” is not an excuse; it’s something five-year-olds say. Excuses, in case you haven’t heard this before, are for losers.
It is the job of supporters to advocate for their candidate. Bernie Sanders’ proposals for the US have already had a big impact. Keep pushing for them. Push back aginst right wing think tanks trying to mislead people about good ideas like Medicare for all.
What could change the course of events in the upcoming election would be if Bernie supporters showed themselves to be effective advocates. There are other campaigns to be won. There are other causes that could use a hand.
Life will go on after the election. It will be a lot tougher and rougher if The Donald is in the White House.
Oh, look! Here’s something we could spread around…
From the Guardian, reporting on Donald Trump’s financial disclosure filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Tuesday:
But the filing demonstrates a number of interesting investments by Trump. Despite his frequent tirades against Oreo cookies for moving some production to Mexico and his pledge to boycott the popular cookie, Trump earned between $5,000 and $15,000 in interest on bonds in Mondelez, the holding company which owns Oreo. Trump also earned between $2,500 and $5,000 in interest in bonds in United Technologies Corporation, the owner of Carrier Air Conditioning. On the campaign trail in Indiana, Trump repeatedly attacked Carrier for moving manufacturing jobs overseas and out of the state.
On This Day: 1920 – A shootout occurred in Matewan, W. Va., between striking union miners (led by Police Chief Sid Hatfield) and coal company agents. Ten died, including seven agents. 1962 – Marilyn Monroe performed a sultry rendition of “Happy Birthday” for President John F. Kennedy. The event was a fund-raiser at New York’s Madison Square Garden. 1992 – Vice President Dan Quayle criticized the CBS sitcom “Murphy Brown” for having its title character decide to bear a child out of wedlock.
Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to “The Starting Line” and get an email every time a new article in this series is posted!
I read the Daily Fishwrap(s) so you don’t have to… Catch “the Starting Line” Monday thru Friday right here at San Diego Free Press (dot) org. Send your hate mail and ideas to DougPorter@SanDiegoFreePress.Org Check us out on Facebook and Twitter
Doug Porter
Latest posts by Doug Porter (see all)
- Last Call. Last Column. - December 14, 2018
- Which Presidential Candidate Will You Support in 2020? - December 13, 2018
- Mounting the Assault on Big Gay and Other Drivel From SDSU’s Minimum Wage Scrooge - December 12, 2018
Methinks pro-Hillary people protest too much.
Virtually every mainstream newspaper is about to endorse her. They’ve suppressed coverage of Sanders rallies, underestimating the crowds he’s attracted. For months now Clinton press releases have guided their coverage of the primaries: Sanders first had no chance and Hillary’s election was inevitable; then they started counting super delegates to the convention as in the Hillary camp, even though they are not pledged to her; then headlines compared Sanders to Trumpe, then started complaining about noisy demonstrators disrupting her rallies and, now? The remaining primary state elections are being discounted as too little too late. And, oh yes, Bernie’s encouraging violence, and by refusing to drop out, his own campaign is going to elect Trump. I’ve missed a few things in this tweet, but who cares? It became obvious long ago the news industry has dedicated itself to Hillary’s election and to Trump’s outlandish misbehaviour. This sort of cheap spectacle has replaced pro sports and sex as the go-to for the old school, broke and busted mainstream.
Agreed. Where were the chairs? How is it that no one was able to capture video of chairs thrown?
The DNC is corrupt. The media is corrupt. It’s sad that most people lack the time or sometimes the intelligence to search for evidence.
Yes, all are corrupt except for Bernie. He is the High Sparrow who will cleanse all with his righteous fury.
If the DNC is so horrible, why did he join it so recently? That move itself sounds very corrupt.
I don’t disagree condemning the stupid vitriol. (See what I did there?) Every instance of inane photoshop or epithets like Shillary, Hitllary, etc. and I want to reach through the optic fiber and make it stop.
NO ONE changes their view when confronted with this puerile nonsense.
That said, I work for an intelligence agency, hold a TS/SCI clearance, and some of my group’s classified information was made public by State Department when it ‘released’ some of Clinton’s emails. Yes, it was on the ‘high side’ (JWICS). No, you cannot get around protocols by paraphrasing the information. And (for god’s sake people) it doesn’t matter if it is marked or not. Our analysis about a foreign situation is classified: not only did my commander mark it that way, it was transmitted on JWICS secure network, and ALL information about or from foreign governments is automatically classified.
At least in my agency and its sister, no one knows how or why State is such an systemic idiot about CI. Their statements throughout this whole thing are astonishing, their actions (like slapping our intel on their public website) is … I don’t have words here.
To clarify: I’m allowed a non-.gov email. I’m allowed to own a private server. I’m also allowed to own a sofa and kitchen knives. It is what you DO with those things that can be crime-y.
The gov has NEVER prosecuted anyone when it upgrades a classification. Also, no Agency can change the stamp initiated by another. (Meaning, Clinton can’t decide NSA’s decision of classification was wrong and distribute the NSA info. She can only do that with State info.)
Finally, of all the laws involved here, there is only one clause in one part that specifies ‘intent.’ (i.e., Obama’s ‘careless’ or HRC’s ‘mistake’)
The Republicans were howler monkeys trying to make political hay off of dead Americans in Benghazi. That’s just immoral. That’s who they are now, I guess. Judicial Watch has been hunting the Clintons for 25 years. That might be a life ill-spent. (Couldn’t have put that sort of focus into childhood poverty or something?)
None of that matters for the classified-information-where-it-shouldn’t-be problem. I understand your larger point, but objecting to a blind pig finally finding an enormous steaming pile of acorns in the forest just because it’s blind … no. That’s what the Parties do, blind loyalty. It’s divisive and insulting.
p.s. The classified information issue is insanely complicated, spanning regulations, laws, the non-disclosure agreement (so contract law) from (now) seven different agencies, even different countries. Here is one easy aspect:
Classified info is defined as anything that, if released, could harm national security. Those two ideas are one and the same. Say one, you are saying the other.
2009 Executive Order 13256 states that any distribution of foreign government information is presumed to have violated national security. Everyone in IC knows this sentence because it is so sweeping, so point blank, and the only one.
The Clinton emails contained info on and from foreign govs. (For an easily understandable example, use WikiLeaks searchable database for “AFRICOM”.) She distributed it:
1. HRC gave her aides access to info about foreign governments after they lost their clearances (bc they left State) to cull them.
2. HRC put her emails (with foreign gov info) on a thumb drive and handed it to her lawyer who lacked ‘need to know’ (even TS isn’t blanket) in a safe accessible by his law partner. And cleaning crew.
People will dismiss this as stupid. No. Almost every protocol the public says is ‘dumb’ is based in some breach.
Yes, protocols are ‘inconvenient.’ So is five agencies spending years doing damage assessment, thousands of man hours, tens of millions of your tax dollars. Why would they do that – outside of the public media, with budgets shrinking, sequester – if they didn’t have to?
I’m not naive. Everyone knows higher-ups are held to a lesser standard. Petraeus was a good guy but I’d be in jail for a similar violation. But I accept that reality.
This isn’t right-wind-conspiracy. This is the ‘grunts’ spending years mopping up after an avaricious, careless, entitled politician. Truthfully, there is probably no way to know who has what, but we’ll spend the next 20 years monitoring and second-guessing our analysis to find out.
Vote for her, don’t, I don’t care. You can say national security isn’t important to you or just in general, that’s your perogative. But DON’T say she didn’t give away national secrets that the marines in front of embassies in her own department are ordered to give their lives to protect.
I should have added that Republicans, Fox, et al have so damaged their own credibility that no one believes them when something is true.
They cry wolf, and Dems dismiss the very real, very huge classified info problem because of the uninformed vituperative polemics being spewed by partisan talking heads. (Who don’t even bother to figure out what she actually did. They confuse the issue with their ignorance, not just their hate-filled jeremiads.)
The flip side of this coin though is, where are Dems on the classified issue? Where is their supposed moral authority? They are choosing party over national security.
A co-worker and I were talking about voting the other day; he said that if voting affected anything, it would have been outlawed.
The last straw for me on FB was when I saw a meme which stated Clinton was endorsed by a Koch brother and Dick Cheney! It was but one example of the myriad of ridiculous anti-Hillary postings I have seen on FB. There has been so much mis-information spread about Clinton on social network sites. You suggested we not let those postings go without pointing out their sheer absurdity. I tried that for awhile. It was like beating a dead horse (the postings and comments reflect less brain activity than the dead horse). I argued with one poster long enough to reveal the person was a Libertarian, not a Bernie supporter. I had heard before the primary campaign ever began that Republicans had a secret meeting in order to organize a massive anti-Hillary campaign on social network sites. I see it is now in full force, spreading blatant lies about Hillary. I also see they disguise their intent and purpose by claiming to be supporters of her primary opponent. Yet their true purpose is to create rancor among Democratic voters, and to cast suspicion on the DNC.
This is the point people: It’s not the job of supporters to spread smears.
2nd point- vote in the damn primary for whomever you wish but vote for the nominee in November. Too much is at stake if Trump should win the White House. Seriously.