Monday, April 18, 2016

Hillary And The Damage Done... In Down Ballot Races

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Is it fair to point out that Hillary used anti-gay demonology as a tool to reach her goals? You be the judge by watching the video of her above sticking to her conservative principles and keeping in mind what she told an NPR audience just before she turned 50: "I feel like my political beliefs are rooted in the conservatism that I was raised with... I'm very proud that I was a Goldwater Girl."

Ever since Bernie started raising money for 3 outstanding progressive women running for Congress-- Zephyr Teachout (NY), Lucy Flores (NV) and Pramila Jayapal (WA)-- he Hill-bots have been out in force, putting aside, momentarily, no doubt, that Bernie is an NRA shill, for the message that he's homophobic. Since they have no video of him actually being a bigoted homophobic monster like the one of Clinton above, they came up with the twisted logic that because he's supporting these three progressive-- 100% pro-gay-- women he's anti-gay because 2 of them have gay opponents.

The Washington Blade, which endorsed Clinton back in February, covered the manufactured "news" under this deceitful headline: Sanders raising funds against gay congressional candidates.
[T]wo of these three candidates are seeking to defeat openly gay contenders seeking the Democratic nomination to run for Congress. As of right now, a total of seven lawmakers serving in the Congress are openly gay, lesbian or bisexual, or slightly more than 1 percent of the legislative body. That’s short of the estimated 3.5 percent of the U.S. population as a whole who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual, according to the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. (Transgender people make up an estimated one-third of one percent of the U.S. population, but no member of Congress, nor any member of a state legislature, is openly transgender.)

Teachout is running against Will Yandik, an openly gay farmer and Livingston deputy town supervisor who recently had a child with his same-sex spouse. Their primary is on June 28, weeks after the presidential contest on Tuesday.

Jayapal is competing against two openly gay candidates: Joe McDermott, a former member of the Washington legislature and now a member of the King County Council, and Brady Walkinshaw, a member of the Washington State House. Their primary is set for August 2, some time after the Washington presidential caucuses for Democrats, which took place on March 26, and the Republicans, which is set for May 24.

Both McDermott and Walkinshaw told the Washington Blade they objected to Sanders’ endorsements of their opponents at a time LGBT people aren’t proportionately represented in Congress.

McDermott [who has endorsed the more conservative Clinton despite the fact that she lost the caucus' in his state 73-27% and failed to win even a third of the vote in his own county] called Sanders’ endorsement out-of-state interference in a race that should be decided by people of his district n Washington State... Walkinshaw said Sanders’ effort is undermining efforts to seat an openly LGBT and Spanish-speaking person as a representative in Congress.
The more conservative Clinton started in politics as an active Republican and has admitted, as recently as just before her 50th birthday, that her agenda is rooted in her conservative upbringing and that she's proud that she campaigned for Barry Goldwater. She was also president of the Young Republicans at Wellsley College. Nonetheless she has been trying to paint Bernie as less of a Democrat, despite the fact that while she was fighting for the racist right-wing Republican agenda, he was the president of his college's chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality and was arrested in an anti-segregation rally. He is more a Democrat in every way-- unless you define "Democrat" as being in cahoots with the party's corrupted Beltway elite, in which case no one beats Hillary.



Lately she's been whining that she raises money for down-ticket candidates and he doesn't-- another in an unending stream of Clinton lies that has made her into a despised and mistrusted figure among voters who pay attention. Her downticket exertions were primarily to win super-delegates for herself and the small amounts she has donated to congressional candidates, didn't go to any congressional candidates but to the corrupt, ineffective and incompetent party bosses at the DCCC, DNC and DSCC. Chuck Schumer, for example, isn't using DSCC money to defeat Republican Senator Pat Toomey, but using all of it earmarked for Pennsylvania to defeat the popular primary candidate Joe Sestak, who is the best-suited to defeat Toomey, and replace him with an unpopular Schumer puppet, Katie McGinty would would stand virtually no chance against Toomey. That's the Clinton vision for helping downtick races.

Bernie's political revolution has encouraged hundreds of thousands of dollars in small contributions to flow directly to progressive candidates-- like these at the Bernie Congress ActBlue page-- while Hillary has given money to the DCCC to push conservatives garbage candidates from right-wing incumbents who reflexively vote for the Republican agenda (like Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ), Brad Ashford (Blue Dog-NE), Scott Peters (New Dem-CA), Ami Bera (New Dem-CA), and Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY) to the motley collection of New Dems and Wall Street shills being pushed by Steve Israel, like non-Democrats Monica Vernon (IA), Randall Perkins (FL) and Mike Derrick (NY) as well as conservatives in bitter primaries against progressives, from Salud Carbajal (CA), Val Demings (FL) and the aforementioned DINO Monica Vernon (IA) to Harry Reid puppet Jacky Rosen (NV), Bryan Caforio (CA) and Bill Golderer (PA). Needless to say, the DCCC is not supporting progressives like Zephyr Teachout, Pramila Jayapal or Lucy Flores. With the tiniest handful of exceptions, the DCCC, like the DSCC, only supports corrupt conservative candidates. And of course, the venal, self-serving party bosses abhor independent-minded candidates like Teachout, Jayapal and Flores. 



Democrats are better off if Clinton stops financing corrupt conservatives from her wing of the party. Please consider helping progressives win congressional seats by tapping on the thermometer below:
Goal Thermometer

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8 Comments:

At 6:17 AM, Anonymous Theresa said...

I am a gay woman. I do not want to be judged by my gender or orientation and I will not pick a candidate based on their gender or orientation. A (theoretical) straight man who will fight for the poorest and most disenfranchised among us is always better than a (theoretical) gay woman who will fall in line with the corporate establishment. I want a progressive government and I, like many other Bernie supporters, have been pushing progressive down-ballot candidates for months. Sites like berniecrats.net list these candidates. ‎

 
At 9:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Lately she's been whining that she raises money for down-ticket candidates and he doesn't."

Yeah, I worked for a NY candidate in 2008 who got a message from HRC just before the general election that she was passing through and would be at the airport and would we like a photo. "Sure, why not?" we replied. She showed and four or five other local Democrats were there and we got a photo or two. A week or so later, an invoice arrived. We were billed for her plane travel.

 
At 10:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

STOP. LYING ABOUT HILLARY'S LGBT RECORD.

I used to love DownwithTyranny but this continual lying about Hillary (& Bill's) long history of doing materially good things for LGBT people--LGBT rights is more than just marriage!!!--has honestly really made distrustful of the website.

 
At 10:51 AM, Blogger DownWithTyranny said...

That video of her speaking on the Senate floor isn't something I made up or took out of context. You have every right to support her but you should do it with your eyes open and understand the calibre of person you're backing. If LGBT issues mean something to you, at least you can feel happy that she has been dragged away from what she admits are her conservative values and now that the hard-fought battles have been fought she's with us. And when the next tough battle comes up, the victims of oppression will have Bernie and people like him to stand with them, while she waits for the focus group testing to tell her when it's safe to run to the front of the parade.

 
At 11:14 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

You VERY MUCH DID TAKE IT OUT OF CONTEXT. In context she's OPPOSED TO CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT AGAINST GAY MARRIAGE.

http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4535174/hillary-clinton-gay-marriage-2004

Bill Clinton eliminated the federal ban on openly gay people serving in the federal government in 1995. Bill banned the federal government from discriminating against LGB in 1998. Also remember that Don't Ask, Don't Tell was implemented because Bill tried to end the total ban on LGB people in the military. He fought his own party in Congress, lost, & we got DADT as a compromise that was supposed to be better than the previous total ban (it wasn't all that much better & Hillary was publicly apologizing for DADT's failure back in 1999).

Bill also appointed the very first openly gay & openly HIV people in his administration.

Hillary was openly in favor civil unions her entire senate career. Heck Hillary CAMPAIGNED on civil union benefits back in 2000.

& campaigned on ending DOMA & DADT in 2008.

Sanders was publicly only for civil unions until 2009. When Sanders was running for the Senate in 2006 he was against gay marriage.

LGBT rights is more than just marriage.

The Clintons AND Sanders have been pro-LGBT rights for decades. None of the three is any better than the others.

I understand why you want to lie about the Clintons on LGBT issues & hold up Sanders as a saint, but it's simply not true.

There are many reasons to prefer Sanders to Hillary, but LGBT rights advocacy IS NOT ONE OF THEM.

 
At 11:26 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

If you want to hate Hillary for being a war-hawk or a corporatist go right ahead. I'm fine with that, but Sanders' record on LGBT issues is not really better than the Clintons.

Aravosis has a list of the good things Bill did for LGBT people while president here:


http://americablog.com/2016/03/lefts-troubling-embrace-gop-anti-clinton-talking-points.html

Aravosis doesn't even talk about the pro-LGBT things Hillary did after the 1990s. She marched in gay prides every year in NY. As secretary of state she gave full benefits to gay employees of the state department. She also made way easier for trans people to change the gender on their passports to reflect their true gender as secretary of state (and these were things she chose to do--not something Obama ordered her to do): http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/24/how-hillary-clinton-moved-trans-rights-forward.html


Again, attack Hillary all you want for being hawkish & corporatist, but she & her husband did a lot for LGBT people.

YOU NEED TO PUBLICLY RETRACT YOUR WRONGFUL SMEAR OF HILLARY AS ANTI-LGBT UNTIL IT WAS CONVENIENT!!!!

 
At 12:59 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Calm down!

 
At 3:40 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

LMAO!

I just want progressives to be better than this.

Like everyone else who reads this blog regularly I prefer Sanders to Hillary, but seeing Fox-news style dishonesty bothers me as I think progressives need to be better than this. It bothers me too because as a gay millenial who knows several older gay & lesbians who were directly positively impacted by Clinton administration in the 1990 the dishonesty of this type of attack is just so enraging because it is is so Republican-like to be this dishonest.

Sanders really is not better than Hillary on LGBT issues. He's the better candidate for America, but he really has not better than the Clintons on LGBT issues (he's never been anti-LGBT though): http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2015/10/05/bernie_sanders_on_marriage_equality_he_s_no_longtime_champion.html

 

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