There's a big brouhaha about what happened at the Nevada State Democratic meeting last week. Clinton's supporters on the state board and on the Democratc National Committee are accusing Sanders' supporters of being disruptive to the point of "violence" and "throwing chairs". There's no evidence of such. In spite of all the smart phones present, there's no evidence of bad acts. Yelling? Yes. There's also accusations of death threats via phone message to the state Democratic Clinton-captive boss. To my ears they sound fake, one male voice even sounding like the same guy over and over again. And how exactly do you get an actual voice mail to be audible on national TV?
And then comes Sen. Harry Reid to lecture Bernie Sanders on getting his people to behave.
Whoa, Nellie! What is going on here?
This is actually Chapter Two of one of the greatest political ripoffs I've ever seen or heard about since my collateral Daley relatives used to pull off shenanigans in Chicago politics. To understand the context of the Nevada recent ripoff, please take a look at Chapter One: how Sen. Harry Reid engineered the original district caucuses to heavily favor Clinton. It's a classic theft, and I wrote it up back when it happened back in February. SEE: What Hillary Lost In Nevada; What Bernie Won In So...
The sad thing here is that the Sanders people at this recent state meeting fell into the trap of getting mad instead of getting even. They SOUNDED angry. They SOUNDED dangerous. A smartie ruthless guy like Reid was just waiting for them to react like that.
What should they have done instead? A walkout perhaps? We did that at the 1980 Democratic Convention under the leadership of the national head of the machinists union in order to protest the Carter delegates refusing to dump Carter even though he was only 22% in the polls. Their intransigence gave us Ronald Reagan as president and an end to unionism and the resulting end of prosperity of the middle class. We called the walkout "Take a Walk with Wimpy", so named for the machinists' leader's nickname. Our response made good press for us, not bad.
Maybe the Sanders' folks could have done a lie-in? Maybe a dance-in? You can't look obnoxiously threatening if you're all dancing to loud music that drowns out the high-handed crew on stage.
What was missing at the Nevada state meeting was preparation and organization by the Sanders' people. They hadn't even clued the media in on what could happen, thus letting the Clinton/Reid version dominate. They are apparently too young, God love 'em, to have anticipated how crooked the proceedings would be and to have orchestrated a productive response. This oversight is hard to understand, however, given how shafted they had been in the district caucuses in February, particularly the one in Las Vegas.
Well, read my blog about that February grand theft and see if you would have been suspicious going into the state convention. And would have been prepared with a plan and a press release?
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