OH MY! Former Hillary supporter ADMITS to anti-Bernie online smear campaign

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I am NOT, in any way, affiliated with the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign.

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If you’ve suspected that the Hillary Clinton campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination has been waging a stealth campaign against Bernie Sanders by smearing him in online posts, we now have proof of that. An individual, who described himself/herself as a former digital media specialist for Hillary (through a public relations firm) who is now a Bernie supporter, gave a lengthy explanation of an online smear campaign that Hillary operatives have been waging against Bernie. The original post was taken down, although it’s since been re-uploaded to Reddit by (apparently) a different individual.

The smear campaign has operated in the form of Hillary campaign operatives posting various anti-Bernie smears on various social media and left-wing political websites at the behest of higher-ups in a public relations firm affiliated with the Hillary campaign, with the people attacking Bernie not revealing themselves to be working for Hillary. Hillary operatives use five different attack lines against Bernie:

1) Sexism. This was the biggest one we were supposed to push. We had to smear Bernie as misogynistic and out-of-touch with modern sensibilities. He was to be characterized as “an old white male relic that believed women enjoyed being gang raped”. Anyone who tried to object to this characterization would be repeatedly slammed as sexist until they went away or people lost interest.

2) Racism. We were instructed to hammer home how Bernie supporters were all privileged white students that had no idea how the world worked. We had to tout Hillary’s great record with “the blacks” (yes, that’s the actual way it was phrased), and generally use racial identity politics to attack Sanders and bolster Hillary as the only unifying figure.

3) Electability. All of those posts about how Sanders can never win and Hillary is inevitable? Some of those were us, done deliberately in an attempt to demoralize Bernie supporters and convince them to stop campaigning for him. The problem is that this was an outright fabrication and not an accurate assessment of the current political situation. But the truth didn’t matter – we were trying to create a new truth, not to spread the existing truth.

4) Dirty tactics. This is where things got really bad. We were instructed to create narratives of Clinton supporters as being victimized by Sanders supporters, even if they were entirely fabricated…These kind of posts are manufactured to divide and demoralize Sanders supporters, and are entirely artificial in nature. (The same thing happened in 2008, but it wasn’t as noticeable before social media and public attention focused on popular forums like Reddit).

5) Opponent outreach. There are several forums and imageboards where Sanders is not very popular (I think you can imagine which ones those are.) We were instructed to make pro-Sanders troll posts to rile up the user base and then try to goad them into raiding or attacking places like this subreddit. This was probably the only area where we only had mixed success, since that particular subset of the population were more difficult to manipulate than we originally thought.

Hillary Clinton is running a dirty, underhanded campaign as part of the failed Obama-Clinton Democratic establishment’s War on Progressives, and we have proof of that. This is yet another reason why I’m backing Bernie Sanders.

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Why Bernie Sanders is the Democrats’ most electable presidential candidate

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has become one of the toughest tickets in America, and he backed that statement up once again by drawing several thousand people to a political rally in Portland, Maine, a city with a population of 66,194 people.

You might be asking yourself…why is Bernie Sanders gaining so much support? Well, long story short, Bernie is actually the most electable presidential candidate that Democrats could nominate, and there’s a number of reasons why:

• Bernie is a progressive – When I say that Bernie was progressive before it was cool, that’s the truth. Bernie has stood up for workers’ rights, LGBT rights, progressive taxation, and other progressive ideals for decades. With America becoming more and more polarized politically, Democrats need someone who stands up for progressive values to be the party’s standard bearer.
• Bernie talks about ideas – The political hallmark of Bernie is that, when he talks about politics, he talks about actual political issues. While far too many politicians and the corporate media view politics as if it were a sporting event or a soap opera, Bernie talks about actual issues that affect the American people, such as infrastructure, the environment, income inequality, and college affordability.
• Bernie is consistent – Throughout his decades-long political career, Bernie’s views on most political issues have gone unchanged. Very few politicians can claim that.
• Bernie is not a puppet for the wealthy – Bernie is for the people, not the billionaires. In fact, his campaign has received its financial support from people donating small amounts of money to his campaign, and his campaign message has reflected the fact that he’s not for the billionaires.
• Bernie inspires people – Bernie has drawn large crowds to rallies in places like Madison, Wisconsin and Portland, Maine. That’s because his campaign message and platform resonates with a large segment of the American population
• Hillary Clinton is too insular to win the general election – While I’m not a fan of the corporate media in this country, operatives for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign recently used a lasso to keep the media away from Hillary at a parade in New Hampshire. The fact that Hillary thinks that she can win a presidential election while her operatives treat members of the press like cattle gives you a general idea of how much of a trainwreck Hillary’s campaign is, and the fact that Hillary has run an insular campaign so far isn’t helping matters at all.
• Berniementum has left no room for Democrats other than Bernie or Hillary to gain traction – The rise of Bernie’s presidential campaign has made Bernie the progressive standard-bearer against Hillary, the Democratic establishment’s candidate for president. That leaves other Democrats running for president without any ability to build a political base, and they don’t have any chance of winning the Democratic nomination.

Democratic Party of Wisconsin officials are at it again with horrible political messaging

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The author of this blog post is not interested in being hired Communications Director of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and is not interested in any other position involving being an official spokesperson for a political candidate, party, or group.

Melissa Baldauff, the communications director of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin (DPW), wrote this piece claiming that Scott Walker won’t run for the Republican presidential nomination, when, in fact, Walker has not officially said whether or not he’ll run for president in next year’s election:

Speaking with reporters today at a rare stopover in Wisconsin, Scott Walker commented that he’s “going to keep [his] campaign promises” – which if true means the governor won’t be seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 after promising to serve his full term.

Last October at the gubernatorial debate in Eau Claire, Walker said his “plan if elected is to be here for four years” when asked whether he’d serve a full term if re-elected. And last November following his re-election, Walker commented in an interview with WITI (FOX affiliate in Milwaukee) that “Right now, I still feel called to be the governor of the state of Wisconsin, and I’m going to do the best job I can over the next four years.”

While Walker did, in fact, promise at least twice that he’d serve a full second term as Governor of Wisconsin, once before the 2014 election and once immediately after the 2014 election, the headline of Baldauff’s piece, “Scott Walker Won’t Run For President in 2016”, incorrectly implies that Walker had made an official statement that he won’t seek the presidency in next year’s elections. As of this writing, Walker has not yet issued an official statement as to whether or not he’ll run for president. In fact, the (Eau Claire) Leader-Telegram article that Baldauff cited referencing Walker claiming that he wants to keep his promises pertains to Wisconsin’s transportation budget, where Walker and his fellow Republicans have fought against each other over how to eliminate a massive transportation budget deficit. The article Baldauff cited did not mention his well-known ambitions of wanting to be President of the United States so that he and his far-right Republican cronies can turn America into a third-world country. I’m not defending Walker by any stretch of the imagination; in fact, Walker has repeatedly broken promises to the people of Wisconsin and has repeatedly proven that Wisconsinites can’t trust anything he says.

If I were writing that piece, I would have written the headline of that piece as “Scott Walker has Twice Promised Not to Run for President in 2016…Will he Break yet Another Promise?”, “Scott Walker has Effectively Promised that he won’t Run for President in 2016”, or something else that makes it 100% clear what the article is about. In the past, people have pointed out to me on this blog that I’ve written an article that contained a headline and/or passages that implied something different than what I intended to claim, and, when that happens, I make the appropriate edits to the blog post in question. Unlike Republicans and establishment Democrats, I learn from my mistakes.

The Koch Brothers’ political organization thinks there’s more than two million people in Montana

Zach Lahn, the Montana state director for the Koch Brothers-funded political organization Americans for Prosperity, claimed that “millions of Montanans” oppose expanding Medicaid after the Republican-controlled Montana House of Representatives passed a Medicaid expansion bill:

The Montana chapter of Americans for Prosperity goofed when it was responding to the state’s House of Representatives approving legislation to expand Medicaid.

After the House passed the legislation on Thursday night, according to The Great Falls Tribune, Montana AFP state director Zach Lahn released a statement saying that his group was “deeply disappointed in the state legislature’s decision tonight to expand Medicaid. This decision stands directly against the voices of millions of Montanans who have made it clear that they do not want more Obamacare.”

There’s no way that millions of Montanans could possibly support or oppose anything, because there aren’t millions of people who live in Montana! In the most recent Census estimate last year, Montana was estimated to have 1,023,579 people living in the state. Since “millions of Montanans” implies at least two million Montanans, that means that it’s impossible for millions of Montanans to agree on any issue of any kind, since there are fewer than two million Montanans currently in existence.

Even though Montana’s Medicaid expansion plan isn’t perfect, it’s certainly a step in the right direction. While it would require beneficiaries of the Medicaid expansion to pay premiums and participate in programs designed to get them into jobs that pay enough to qualify for federal subsidies to buy private health insurance coverage off of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchange, Montana’s Medicaid expansion will provide tens of thousands of Montanans with affordable health care they otherwise wouldn’t have.

I’ve not seen any polling, but, given that the Republican-controlled Montana state house passed a Medicaid expansion bill, I’m guessing that there’s more people in Montana who support expanding Medicaid than oppose expanding Medicaid.

Scott Walker front group spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski doesn’t know how to properly use Twitter

As Chris “Capper” Liebenthal pointed out at Cognitive Dissidence, Kirsten Kukowski, the communications director of Our American Revival, an apparently illegal 527 group formed to support Scott Walker’s likely bid for the Republican presidential nomination, accidentally directed people to a Twitter handle that is not currently in use instead of Our American Revival’s Twitter page.

In the bio of her personal Twitter account, Kukowski incorrectly listed @OurAmericanRevival as the Walker front group’s Twitter page. In reality, that is a Twitter handle that is not currently in use by any person or organization, and a Twitter search for @OurAmericanRevival only comes up with a single tweet by someone who also got Our American Revival’s Twitter handle wrong. Our American Revival’s Twitter handle is actually @OurRevival. As of this writing, Kukowski has not yet updated her bio to include Our American Revival’s actual Twitter handle, and it appears that she’s only started following @OurRevival recently, as it’s near the top of her “following” list.

Given that Walker is surrounding himself with incompetent people like Kirsten Kukowski, who can’t direct people to the correct Twitter handle for a pro-Walker organization she works for, it’s clear to me that a Scott Walker presidency would likely be full of much more serious screw-ups that could endanger the American people.

Wisconsin Democratic operative Brandon Savage, who supports Jason Rae for Wisconsin Democratic chair, throws Tammy Baldwin under the bus

Brandon Savage, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin-area Democratic operative who is a political ally of conservative Milwaukee County Executive Chris “Boss” Abele and candidate for Democratic Party of Wisconsin (DPW) chairperson Jason Rae, reportedly stated on Facebook that he thinks that U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin will lose re-election in 2018 if a Democrat wins the 2016 presidential election, in fact, Savage went as far as to name the individual who he thinks will defeat Baldwin:

Right now, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke is thinking, “why would I settle on running for (Milwaukee) mayor in 2016, when I could run for US Senate in 2018 and take out (Tammy) Baldwin?” If (Hillary) Clinton is president, Dems have a guaranteed bad midterm. The end result is simple: US Senator David A. Clarke, Jr.

Please note that it’s possible that someone other than Hillary Clinton, such as Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders, could win the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination and go on to win the general election.

For those of you who don’t know who David Clarke is, he’s the ultra-conservative Milwaukee County Sheriff who keeps getting re-elected to his current office by running in Democratic primaries and getting Republicans to vote in the Democratic primary for him. If Clarke were to run for a partisan statewide office, he’d likely run as a Republican, since he’s a staunch supporter of gun lobby groups like the NRA and is a member of far-right groups like the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), additionally, it’s very hard for someone like Clarke to run in a statewide Democratic primary in Wisconsin and get Republicans across the state to vote for him in a Democratic primary. Clarke has made no secret of the fact that he’s considering running for other offices (most notably Milwaukee Mayor in 2016), so Democrats and progressives in Wisconsin need to be prepared to strongly oppose Clarke if and when he decides to run for either another term as Milwaukee County Sheriff or for another office.

For Brandon Savage to essentially throw Tammy Baldwin, who has served Wisconsin to the best of her ability for the past two years and has built up a mostly progressive voting record as a U.S. Senator, under the bus by saying that he thinks that she’s going to lose re-election to a far-right nutjob like David Clarke even though it’s nearly four years until she’s on a Wisconsin ballot again (if she decides to run for a second term in the U.S. Senate, which is likely) is absolutely disgusting. Furthermore, Savage’s doom and gloom remarks about Baldwin’s re-election chances is indisputable proof that Savage, Mike Tate, Jason Rae, and the rest of the failed Democratic leadership in Wisconsin and their allies aren’t concerned one bit about winning elections in a critical swing state to the Democratic Party. Also, regarding Savage’s comments about how he thinks that the 2018 midterm elections being a “guaranteed bad midterm” year for Democrats, it’s nearly four years away, so it’s practically impossible to predict what the political landscape in this country would look like then. It’s worth noting that, in 1998 and 2002, the incumbent president’s party won a net gain of seats in at least one chamber of Congress, so it wouldn’t be unprecedented for a Democrat to win the 2016 presidential election and then for Democrats to do well in the 2018 midterm elections.

In fact, Savage’s doom and gloom comments about Baldwin’s U.S. Senate re-election chances may have been a huge turning point in the race for DPW chair, given that Savage is backing Jason Rae for DPW chair and, therefore, Savage’s remarks are something that Rae will have to answer for. If Tammy Baldwin decides to endorse a candidate for DPW chair, she might not endorse Jason Rae over Savage’s remarks about her re-election chances, although she probably won’t endorse Joe Wineke, given that Baldwin defeated Wineke in a 1998 U.S. House Democratic primary in the Madison-based 2nd District of Wisconsin. This could be a big opening for someone like Jeff Smith or Stephen Smith, the two other candidates currently in the race for DPW chair, Mary Lang Sollinger, who is likely to run for DPW chair, or one of the several possible candidates who are considering running, such as Lori Compas or Tanya Lohr. Of course, Baldwin’s vote is only one vote out of (likely) several hundred at the DPW convention in June (and that’s if she’s a voting convention delegate), and it’s certainly possible that a DPW chair candidate can get elected by defeating a Baldwin-endorsed candidate. However, Baldwin is the most high-profile Democratic elected official in Wisconsin, so any endorsement by her could have an effect on swaying any undecided delegates.