Election 2016

[Username17]

Wouldn't spending "$8.6 million for web advertising that mostly looks indistinguishable from Clinton campaign ads," be considered using Hillary Victory Fund money to fund Hillary instead of down ticket races?


Matt Taibbi is a fantastic writer and journalist, just because he did an article on how the DNC showed favor to Clinton doesn't mean he's Satan. It's titled "DNC Leak Shows Mechanics of a Slanted Campaign," not "Hillary Clinton Steals Money From State Parties." He didn't bury the lead because the article wasn't about the fund you turdburger. He uses it as an example and thus talks about it for a while, but the bulk of the article is that the DNC tried to help Hillary and make Sanders look bad.

Stop licking Hillary's taint so much; she won and we're all fucking voting for her. You're making it harder to pull the lever for her by being so asstastic about everything.

I've done some reading up on who this Matt Taibbi taint licker is, and he's an aimless nihilist who thinks he's Hunter S Thompson and faps himself to sleep with false equivalency. He's not a fantastic writer or a fantastic journalist. He's a tired one note act where he craps out lame cynicism and justifies it all by claiming to be all-in on anti-establishmentism. He's been doing the same stupid "Republicans and Democrats are equally corrupt and basically the same, but I'm an awesome and detached leftist snowflake" routine since at least 2010, and probably before that. I honestly don't care enough to dig farther into the past than that.

His entire frame in that piece was all about a scandal which was so much of a nothingburger that even Fox News gave up trying to fuck that chicken. If you bring that up and fail to mention that the core complaint is incoherent, you are misleading your audience. If you're a journalist of any talent and have been following this story for more than forty five seconds, that misleading has to be deliberate.

Let's be real here: Trump has a Joint Fundraising Agreement with the RNC. Bernie Sanders had a Joint Fundraising Agreement with the DNC. That is simply how campaign finances work. The only story about the Hillary Victory Fund is that Hillary's team has been better at getting that shit to work than Trump or Sanders. If you even discuss this in a way that implies that joint fundraising agreements are a uniquely Clinton phenomenon, you are a liar. Matt Taibbi is a liar. He lied. His report was fundamentally not truthful, and I didn't finish it because I was fucking bored of being lied to.

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

For fuck's sake.

The transfer of funds from state parties to national parties is unlimited. There are no limits. Limits there are none. If you write a check to a Democratic state party it is 100% within its legal rights to turn around and give that check to the DNC, and it is also 100% within the rights of the DNC to spend that money on whatever the fuck it wants (subject to whatever restrictions already apply on their spending). Yes, even on ads that are clearly - but not explicitly - pro-Clinton.

You could make the argument that it was an unfair advantage for Hillary Clinton, what with the donations (even those to the national and state parties) ultimately being controlled by campaign staff from the Clinton Campaign. But unfair necessarily implies asymmetric, and the DNC offered to let Bernie do the exact same thing, and he told them to go fuck themself, and then they shrugged and appointed their own guy to watch over all of the money it didn't bring in because he ignored it.

You could make the argument that because Sanders didn't engage with his Victory Fund that the end result was an asymmetric allocation of DNC funds in favor of one candidate. That argument would be both an accounting and legal nightmare and I already can't be assed to give two shits either way because it's frankly splitting some pretty small hairs by some pretty trivial margins. There is way better evidence that the DNC favored Hillary Clinton. You know, like the superdelegates waving their dick around the entire race in an attempt to intimidate Sanders voting into staying home. Some pro-Democrat web ads that "weren't quite as candidate neutral as they should have been" is going to earn you an eyeroll.

You could make the argument that the Hillary Victory Fund was somehow misleading to donors. Boo fucking hoo, a bunch of billionaires didn't understand campaign finance law, and mistakenly believed that there was a meaningful financial distinction between state parties and national parties, and now as a result all of that money they gave will end up being spent way more strategically than if it were limited to being spent in the states which nominally received it. The fucking horror. Damn our politicians for using the laws as they are instead of as we want them to be!

This is another one of those situations where business as usual is magically a scandal because the Clinton name is attached to it. This is how our campaign finance laws work. Yes, we should reform them. No, it's not a controversy that Hillary Clinton and the DNC are operating within the bounds of the law to maximize the strategic value of their limited donations. I will begrudge them doing exactly that, as long as they continue to push for better campaign finance laws.

[Ancient History]

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2016/07/28/h ... n-herself/

[Kaelik]

Wouldn't spending "$8.6 million for web advertising that mostly looks indistinguishable from Clinton campaign ads," be considered using Hillary Victory Fund money to fund Hillary instead of down ticket races?

Yes that $8.6 million is absolutely money spent to fund Hillary, but it's also 8.6 Million. The Hillary Victory Fund raised $61 Million dollars. So it is totally possible that the approximately 22 Million that Clinton and the DNC claimed will be spent on down ballot races still will be.

The transfer of funds from state parties to national parties is unlimited. There are no limits. Limits there are none. If you write a check to a Democratic state party it is 100% within its legal rights to turn around and give that check to the DNC, and it is also 100% within the rights of the DNC to spend that money on whatever the fuck it wants (subject to whatever restrictions already apply on their spending). Yes, even on ads that are clearly - but not explicitly - pro-Clinton.

Of course it is legal, but the entire point is that Clinton, and the DNC, and the donors, all claimed that it was to help down ballot races. It doesn't matter that it's legal for them to spend it all on Clinton, because even though it is legal, it would still make them liars. Which is why Frank is of course saying that they totally won't do that, and that at some unspecified point in the future after we have a full accounting of all spending is the only time anyone is even allowed to bring this up.

The problem is that the response is, like always "It's totally fine for Clinton and the DNC to do that, but also she didn't do it." Which just reminds me that it's always better to make one excuse than two.

Some pro-Democrat web ads that "weren't quite as candidate neutral as they should have been" is going to earn you an eyeroll.

You could make the argument that the Hillary Victory Fund was somehow misleading to donors. Boo fucking hoo, a bunch of billionaires didn't understand campaign finance law, and mistakenly believed that there was a meaningful financial distinction between state parties and national parties, and now as a result all of that money they gave will end up being spent way more strategically than if it were limited to being spent in the states which nominally received it. The fucking horror.

As usual, the problem is not the entirely minor problem. It's really not that big a deal that someone somewhere plagiarized some good parts from Michelle Obama's Speech, more important was the Trump campaign response of, "She didn't do it, it wouldn't be a problem if she did, the media is blowing this out of proportion, must be the fault of someone else."

Which is the exact same response of the DNC and the Clinton campaign, and as the article in question points out.

I will begrudge them doing exactly that, as long as they continue to push for better campaign finance laws.

Then why aren't you throwing a shit fit? Or do you actually think Campaign Finance Reform is going to happen at the behest of the Clinton White House, and not in spite of it if at all?

[phlapjackage]

Matt Taibbi is a national treasure. I have no idea why he's at the Rolling Stone instead of literally anywhere else, but he's a damn good journalist.

IIRC he tried to start his own media company last year or something and it didn't work out for some reason and he had to go back to Rolling Stone. Wish it had actually happened...

I've done some reading up on who this Matt Taibbi taint licker is, and he's an aimless nihilist who thinks he's Hunter S Thompson and faps himself to sleep with false equivalency.

You're trying too hard for funny and interesting name-calling here, and failing miserably. And if the worst you can find is a dailykos(!) diary entry(!!) written by a guy who wrote this(!!!), well then...

And so anecdotally, my position on these matters is swayed more by people who seem reasoned and rational even if they disagree with Taibbi (like DSM) and increasingly less by those who seem so...rabid? (Frank).

[Prak]

Roughly half of all young male journalists want to be Hunter S Thompson. The other half want to be sports journalists and don't know who Hunter S Thompson was.

[Mask_De_H]

And out of that half, about 75% of them unconsciously try to emulate HST because his voice and style influenced guys like Bill Simmons, who those sports journos want to be.

[tussock]

I don't imagine the billionaire donors were actually confused about where their money was going. I know people don't get especially smart with money just because they have a lot of it, but still, if you'd hit the finance law limits on giving to Hilary and wanted to give more and she said you can just give however much to whatever state democrats and we'll get some use out of that ... well, duh.

But also, Bernie's campaign was based around scrupulously not taking money from billionaires, so he could point at how Hillary's campaign totally was based around taking money from billionaires.

So discovering that Bernie got more money from small donors and Hillary got more money through weird legal channels from billionaires, I can see why Bernie supporters think that's a bad thing, on the grounds that was one of his major talking points.


But I don't know, you're not automatically a bad person just because you have a tonne of money. They'd have given money to Bernie too if he'd let them, legally they'd have had to through the states like that. Bernie just refused it, that doesn't make them bad.

[erik]

You guys may have reason to be crushing on Taibbi from prvious work but I saw nothing laudable in that linked article. It is was weak tea and just pointed to other articles where those primary authors plainly described their research method as plugging in key words to wiki leaks. Not exactly top notch journalism.

[Prak]

You guys may have reason to be crushing on Taibbi from prvious work but I saw nothing laudable in that linked article. It is was weak tea and just pointed to other articles where those primary authors plainly described their research method as plugging in key words to wiki leaks. Not exactly top notch journalism.

Welcome to the era of Buzzfeed and XPo outlets.

[phlapjackage]

And so anecdotally, my position on these matters is swayed more by people who seem reasoned and rational even if they disagree with Taibbi (like DSM and erik) and increasingly less by those who seem so...rabid? (Frank).

Fixed that for me

[Kaelik]

You guys may have reason to be crushing on Taibbi from prvious work but I saw nothing laudable in that linked article. It is was weak tea and just pointed to other articles where those primary authors plainly described their research method as plugging in key words to wiki leaks. Not exactly top notch journalism.

Yeah I don't understand why that article was viewed as particularly good. It literally just "Hey, here's the DNC emails that responded to that article by Vogel, isn't that kind of neat/mildly annoying."

[Username17]

Bernie just refused it, that doesn't make them bad.

He didn't even exactly refuse it. He signed the joint fundraising agreement with the DNC. Then his campaign collected money in excess of the limit from a lot of people. Then his campaign had a 500 page FEC violation notice and the excess money had to be given back rather than diverted into state party warchests.

This wasn't a principled stance against sharing funds with other Democratic candidates, this was the fact that the Bernie Sanders campaign ended up getting so many small donors that they were unable to properly submit the accounting in time and the joint fundraising agreement fell apart. You can look at this as a good thing (Sanders campaign was too popular for its administrative staff to handle), or you can look at it as a bad thing (Sanders campaign had insufficient administrative staff to handle its finances).

I look at it as a little of both. The Sanders campaign certainly showed that in the era of social media you do not need to suck the dick of big money donors to fund a political campaign. It means that as Democrats we simply do not need to appease groups like the NRA or Fix The Debt ever again. On the other hand, the Sanders campaign clearly grew beyond its logistical staff's ability to cope very quickly. The Democratic Party needs more boring people with excel spreadsheets to translate popular positions into effective political movements.

And so anecdotally, my position on these matters is swayed more by people who seem reasoned and rational even if they disagree with Taibbi (like DSM and erik) and increasingly less by those who seem so...rabid? (Frank).

Has Matt Taibbi made any column ever in his life that was interesting and true? Since being made aware of him and told that he was a national treasure, I've dipped into five columns going back six years and they were all fundamentally dishonest and written from the perspective of whiny privileged nihilism. What has he ever done that wasn't him presenting a fundamentally dishonest narrative that Democrats and Republicans are equally bad?

-Username17

[phlapjackage]

Yeah I don't understand why that article was viewed as particularly good. It literally just "Hey, here's the DNC emails that responded to that article by Vogel, isn't that kind of neat/mildly annoying."

I don't see anyone here saying it's particularly good? Unless you mean elsewhere? I posted it, not as "particularly good", but as "I have liked his writing in the past, and now he's written about a topic that is apropos to this thread".

Has Matt Taibbi made any column ever in his life that was interesting and true? Since being made aware of him and told that he was a national treasure, I've dipped into five columns going back six years and they were all fundamentally dishonest and written from the perspective of whiny privileged nihilism. What has he ever done that wasn't him presenting a fundamentally dishonest narrative that Democrats and Republicans are equally bad?

I honestly don't care so much for his political stuff either, sometimes his style can be sophomoric. It's been more the financial stuff I found interesting and...accessible for someone like me. Mostly his coverage of the Goldman Sachs stuff and the subprime mortgage debacle. Hist most famous article recently is probably the "vampire squid"

Anyway, I won't defend Taibbi anymore, I just wanted to hear others opinions on the piece he wrote...and I have that now

[Pseudo Stupidity]

Has Matt Taibbi made any column ever in his life that was interesting and true? Since being made aware of him and told that he was a national treasure, I've dipped into five columns going back six years and they were all fundamentally dishonest and written from the perspective of whiny privileged nihilism. What has he ever done that wasn't him presenting a fundamentally dishonest narrative that Democrats and Republicans are equally bad?

Everything he wrote about the mortgage debacle. He seems to have developed a hate-on for the financial industry (and anyone with ties to it) because of it, but he has lots of really good articles on the subject. Google Zak S, left handed scissors Matt Taibbi, mortgage crisis and anything you hit by him will be great.

[virgil]

Democracy Lost: A Report on the Fatally Flawed 2016 Democratic Primaries
All 99 pages...
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6J1ec ... ef=2&pli=1

[Ancient History]

I call bullshit on "election integrity experts."

[Kaelik]

I call bullshit on anyone who would give it the title "Democracy Lost" instead of any actual title, like "Man, it looks like money and fame are still really important for elections in the US, just like all the other years you were ever alive: A Report on the Fatally Flawed 2016 Democratic Primaries."

EDIT: Apparently it's supposed to be about actual election fraud where some people where registered as Republicans without their knowledge... Okay sure, I guess my title is wrong, but I bet as I keep reading, it never demonstrates any real numbers of this position.

These are their goals apparently:

1) Exclusive use of hand-counted paper ballots in all future US elections.

2) Automatic voter registration with same-day party affiliation switching as a mandatory condition for all elections that are publicly funded.

3) Restoration of voting rights legislation which would ensure adequate access to polling sites.

One of those is terrible, one of those is pretty bad, and one of those makes no sense "Restore"? Why not propose new laws that actually make reasonable access to polling, like, all the different reforms people have suggested?

[nockermensch]

Has Matt Taibbi made any column ever in his life that was interesting and true? Since being made aware of him and told that he was a national treasure, I've dipped into five columns going back six years and they were all fundamentally dishonest and written from the perspective of whiny privileged nihilism. What has he ever done that wasn't him presenting a fundamentally dishonest narrative that Democrats and Republicans are equally bad?

Taibbi and Mark Ames are notorious for The eXile, a gonzo rag published in Moscow during the 90s. I follow Ames more assiduously and these two have had a falling out - for reasons that amount to Taibbi having "sold out" and thus scoring less than 1.0 Mark Ames at the Mark Ames scale of True Journalism Ethics(TM).

Ames exposed the Koch - Tea Party connection back in 2009 and also brought to attention some high grade Austrian School hypocrisy. I don't pay much attention to whatever Taibbi is writing these days, but he used to be good.

In other news, I'm a bit disappointed about this.

[Kaelik]

In other news, I'm a bit disappointed about this.

Donald Trump won the Republican Nomination by saying the craziest of crazy Republican things, therefore he will win the Presidency saying those things, because logic... Oh wait.

[Josh_Kablack]

In other news, I'm a bit disappointed about this.

That's not meant to be serious analysis, that's Micheal Moore trying to scare his presumably left-of-center readership into action with a plausible "doomsday" scenario.

[Ancient History]

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/18/politics/ ... -nominees/

[PhoneLobster]

I don't know, I've been thinking for a while now that increasingly this is looking like Trump actually has a bigger chance than people think.

By enough of a margin that while it's still an outside thing I've been considering taking a gamble calling the election for Trump now just so that I would look prescient in the off chance it actually happened.

[Whipstitch]

Roughly half of all young male journalists want to be Hunter S Thompson. The other half want to be sports journalists and don't know who Hunter S Thompson was.

Trust me, sports journalists know who Thompson was. There's few people more influential in that industry given that the utility of impartiality is actually pretty suspect when you're writing about games that are ultimately being played for entertainment. He started out sports writing and he pretty much wrote the book on using the fact that sports are fundamentally absurd to backdoor his way into talking about whatever the fuck he wanted. He and the other New Journalism guys are the missing link between self-serious print guys and sports radio provocateurs.

[Username17]

I call bullshit on "election integrity experts."

I don't know what an "election integrity expert" is or how you could become one. The overall claim that 2016 is an example of Democracy Losing is basically absurd. So far, the person with the most votes has gotten the nomination in both parties, even in the face of some pretty open attempts to disenfranchise minorities who voted disproportionately for Clinton (note: not by Bernie supporters, by Republicans who wanted to disenfranchise minorities for the general) and straight up steal the election from Trump at the convention.

The example of Democracy Losing in the United States is 2000. That is the only time in the last century where people voted for one guy and another guy won because of corruption and buffoonery. That was really bad, and the consequences for the world were really bad. And if you want to use "Democracy Lost!" hyperbole about that, go right ahead.

But when "organizations" that do not even have wikipedia pages come out with giant tomes accusing Clinton of electoral malfeasance after she has won, I call bullshit. These are not Bernie supporters. Bernie supporters work to stop Trump and to keep the progressive planks of the Democratic platform front and center where they belong. These "organizations" are astroturf financed by Kochs or Putin or both.

The "Institute for American Democracy & Election Integrity" is not a thing as far as I can tell. They have no wikipedia page. They appear in no news articles. They have no existence save for their own web presence and a series of press releases and conspiracy theories promoting the idea that Bernie Sanders was treated unfairly. But what they do have are some front men. Cliff Arnebeck is a real person and a real lawyer who has a real wikipedia page. He is a crank who spreads conspiracy theories, but more importantly he is also a Republican who has a history of running as a Democrat in order to unseat Democrats.

TrustVote is a pro-Republican false flag operation. If Bernie Sanders had won, they'd be saying that he stole the election. The intended purpose is to get leftists angry at other leftists. Nothing more.

-Username17