Voters be damned: A look at the unelected, Clinton-supporting superdelegates who work in lobbying

[Mufaddal]

From Lee Fang, over at the Intercept. I encourage people to check out the full article, but here are a a couple of gems:

Jeff Berman, well-known for his delegate-strategy work in the past, is being paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign to organize her delegate-counting effort while himself being a superdelegate. A “top lobbyist” at Bryan Cave LLP, Berman previously worked as a lobbyist for the private prison company Geo Group and as a lobbyist helping TransCanada build support for the Keystone XL.

Joanne Dowdell, another New Hampshire superdelegate, is the senior vice president for global government affairs at News Corporation, the parent company of Fox News. Federal Election Commission reports show Dowdell has contributed directly to multiple Democrats as well as to the News Corp PAC, a company committee that splits its donations between lawmakers of both parties. The News Corp government affairs division works to lobby public officials and regulators.

Full article: https://theintercept.com/2016/02/17/voters-be-damned/

[SHRED]

1. She will dismantle what's left of The New Deal

She will finish the job her husband started.

[Peregrine Took]

3. You can bet on it. n/t

[dana_b]

5. yes

SS, more trade deals, and I wouldn't be surprised if she flips (again) on the pipeline and maybe let TransCanada have another shot at it instead of paying them the 15B that they want because of the Obama administration pulling their support.

[bvar22]

8. The Canadian Tar is not worth the cost now that the price of Oil has fallen so low.

The Keystone (mostly already finished) will be put on hold, and used as a political football, allowing some to feign non-support.

One thing is certain, if the price of Oil rises to a point where Canadian Tar becomes profitable,
the Corporate Dems will rush in to support finishing Keystone.

The price has dropped so low that US Oil Companies have stopped drilling for sweet or sour crude (infinitesimally preferable to Canadian Tar.)
Rigs are being stacked and their crews "laid off indefinitely" until the price of Oil rises to a point that makes it profitable to drill again.



http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-rigs-baker-hughes-idUSKBN0U61YG20151223

[FreakinDJ]

4. Are you fucking kidding me - Lobbyists will decide the nomination

[Mufaddal]

6. Possibly, and to some extent they always have

Look, let's not kid ourselves, the reason Obama got that Wall St. backing was because it was widely acknowledged that when it came to that interest group, he would "play ball."

It is possible that Bernie could still get a prohibitive number of delegates, such that any number of super delegates would be unable to affect the outcome. Possible, but very unlikely. Still, it would be unwise for them to remain behind Hillary if the popular vote looked solidly behind Bernie, because they would be facing a convention unlike anything that's been seen since Chicago '68. The tacit illusion of a democratic veneer is arguably still too valuable to the party for them to give it up publicly. They have enough cash and tricks to resort to against Bernie that I don't think they'd ever need to resort to super delegates to decide things.

[Left Coast2020]

9. How do we fight these bastards?

I would think that would be worthy of a court challenge.

[Bernin4U]

7. Nobody should be surprised!

We heard "Bernie can never win" a million times. We're supposed to be the Never Say Never campaign. Being told something can't happen or can't be done only motivates us even more.

So wth are any of us saying that this (the supers overriding the popular delegate count) could NEVER happen?

We're talking about the DNC here. Really people. I for one have yet to see a truly convincing argument that they wouldn't use the "nuclear option" if given the chance. "Oh, they would never take that big a risk," is crap.

We should all be writing to our state officials. The DNC is choosing not to embrace the huge wave of new voters that does not support neoliberalism. We need to make it clear that to the DNC this is a fatal mistake.