I have shortchanged Martin O’Malley in the controversy over the protesters at the Netroots Nation Convention. My previous post O’Malley and Sanders Heckled At Netroots Nation Convention has the full video of the session.

In my rush to get to the controversial part, I completely missed the beginning and the interview with Martin O’Malley. This occurs within the first 25 minutes of the video.

What Martin O’Malley had to say was quite good. In some ways, it actually answered some of the questions that were to come from the protesters.

I don’t know enough about Martin O’Malley’s record to be able to attest to the information he gave us. However, based on the words alone, it sounded quite good.

I think I am finally getting his offhanded reference to Michael Dukakis. It seems to me that the law-enforcement initiatives that Martin O’Malley took as Mayor of Baltimore and Governor of Maryland echo what Michael Dukakis did in his first term as Governor of Massachusetts. Dukakis and O’Malley both cracked down on the repeat offenders, as these were the people responsible for most of the crime. I wonder if the people of Maryland or his detractors there frequently compared him to Michael Dukakis as a form of putdown.

Martin O’Malley might make an excellent Vice Presidential running-mate for Bernie Sanders. We would have two people with very similar ideas, but O’Malley would bring some North/South balance and some age balance. If people are afraid that because of his age, Bernie Sanders might not complete his terms, they could feel reassured that a younger person was right behind him, ready to step into his shoes, if necessary.

Eclectablog has the post White progressives get a taste of anger & frustration as #BlackLivesMatter activists upstage Bernie Sanders.

Gov. O’Malley was the first to take the stage with Vargas who jumped right into it by asking questions related to the sharp rise in arrests of black youths under O’Malley’s administration. Not long into the conversation, however, black activists, most of whom were women, began singing/chanting in the back of the room, “What side are you on, my people? What side are you on?”
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After Gov. O’Malley left the stage, Senator Sanders came out. He, too, was shouted down and interrupted repeatedly. Unlike Gov. O’Malley who allowed the protesters to be heard, Sanders was visibly irritated, saying things like, “If you don’t want me here, I will leave.” He even shushed them at one point.
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Sitting in the middle of this maelstrom was a fascinating experience. I, like many of the others there, was initially irritated by the protestors. I was there to hear the candidates and was frustrated that they weren’t being heard. Even a bit angry, in fact. “These are your allies,” I thought. “Why on earth are you attacking them? Why are you disrupting an event where the people there are sympathetic to your cause?”

Frustration. Anger. Being silenced.

Frustration.

Anger.

Silenced.

Talked over.

Ignored.

Every single one of these emotions that ran through my white privileged brain in the first few moments of the protest until I was slapped across the face with what I was being forced to confront. Every single one of these emotions are felt acutely and painfully every single day by racial minority groups in our country. But, instead of being inconvenienced by not being able to hear a politician speak, they face them in the context of being slaughtered in the streets by the police officers who are tasked to protect them, incarcerated in astonishingly disparate numbers, and blamed for not being able to escape from the prison of poverty that holds far too many of them in bondage.

I had missed the point (because I didn’t listen) about how the initial question to O’Malley played right into the planned protest. Good for the moderator.

I loved the way this blog post described the transition from anger and frustration at the protesters, to a sudden realization of the lesson they were teaching.

I hope other, privileged, white people like me get to read this blog post from Eclectablog.

Netroots Nation has the video of the Presidential Town Hall.

The timings that I discuss below may not be accurate. The video had a lot of trouble keeping up with the audio. The audio ended at 56:43, but the video went on to 1:11:21. The video at the end got its sound back, and it started playing the audio that I had heard at 56:00.

If you want to find out about the protest, go to about 29 minutes into the video.

The spokesperson for the protesters, Tia Oso, gets on the stage at 30:57. She says the protesters need to acknowledge the people who have recently been killed by the police. She also introduces the hashtag #Blackroots.

One of the black executives with the Netroots group gets on stage at about 41:48. She tries to stop the protest, but the moderator has other plans.

Patrice, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter gets to speak, and ask a question a few minutes later. Part of what she said is that she doesn’t want to hear what the candidates have done in the past. She wants to here concrete plans for what they are going to do now. She wants to hear an action plan. O’Malley gets to speak again at 46 minutes into the video. rs won’t let him speak. At 47:40, O’Malley gets forced back on track. He will release a criminal justice reform package. All lives matter derailed him again. At 48 O’Malley leaves the stage.

At 51:11 Bernie Sanders comes on stage. Moderator wants specifics, but Sanders wants to make some remarks first. At 52:17 he gets interrupted by an offstage microphone amplified voice, it was the moderator, asking about the immigration bill that was passed. Talking about free college tuition in answer to the moderators next question, low level protests continue.

The session ends at 56:43 of the audio, but the video continues on and tries to catch up.

In any event, Bernie Sanders handled the situation much better than I thought he would when he first started to talk. He wasn’t perfect, but he did answer the questions, and didn’t try to evade them.

You’ve heard the snippets and the excerpts, now you can hear the whole speech that Elizabeth Warren gave at the convention of Netroots Nation.

She didn’t say it explicitly, but we know who does and does not pass her test of what Presidential candidates ought to pledge this year. She gave a pretty big explicit endorsement of what Bernie Sanders stands for, she just didn’t name him.

Occupy Democrats has the post Watch: Bernie Sanders Obliterates John Boehner’s Absurd Smear.

The headline could just as easily been “Bernie Sanders Tames Another Pundit”. I just love the way pundits try to trip him up, but he always has a way of using stupid questions as a launching pad to score his own points. He is a master at rhetorical jujitsu.

The Arizona Republic has the story Warren rips ‘revolving door’ between banks, government.

“Wall Street insiders have enough influence in Washington already without locking up one powerful job after another in the executive branch of our government,” Warren told an adoring audience at the annual Netroots Nation gathering at the Phoenix Convention Center. “Sure, private-sector experience can be valuable — no one ever said otherwise — but there is a point at which the revolving door compromises the public interest. And we are way beyond that point.”

Before they quote the above words, the article said

In a not-so-subtle message to 2016 Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, Warren, D-Mass., said anybody who wants to be president must commit to appointing to key economic positions such as Treasury secretary only those people who have demonstrated independence from Wall Street and a willingness to hold “giant banks” accountable.

It would be close to impossible for Hillary Clinton to make this commitment to avoid people with Wall Street connections in her appointments. Just look at who her husband appointed and who is advising her in the current campaign.

Not coincidentally, the article points out

Democratic presidential hopefuls Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Martin O’Malley of Maryland are expected to appear at Netroots Nation on Saturday. Clinton, a former Secretary of State, is not attending the convention. She was scheduled to speak in Iowa and Arkansas on Friday and Saturday, respectively.

When a Democratic contender is afraid to address an audience of the young, Democratic faithful, then you have to wonder why she is running for the Democratic nomination. It makes more sense to question why she wants to be a Democratic President than it does to question Bernie Sanders’ choice to run in the Democratic primaries.

Alternet has published the article Don’t Count Out the GOP From Trying to Sink Obama’s Historic Iran Deal: They’ve Done It Before by Thom Hartmann. Those of you who know who Thom Hartmann is, know that he is not some left wing crazy person.

The sub-head to the post is

Republican attempts to sabotage a Democratic president’s deal with Iran are nothing new.

The post opens with the paragraph

Ronald Reagan – or at least his campaign – committed treason to become president, and normalizing relations with Iran may expose the whole thing.

The fact that Ronald Reagan did this has been well known almost since the moment he did it. There are details and corroboration of these facts that Hartmann discusses that I did not know about.

Later on, the article goes on to talk about what Nixon did to get elected. In the article you can listen to the recording of a phone call between then President Lyndon Johnson and then Senate Majority Leader Everett Dirksen.

President Johnson: Now, I can identify ‘em, because I know who’s doing this. I don’t want to identify it. I think it would shock America if a principal candidate [Nixon] was playing with a source like this [South Vietnam] on a matter this important. I don’t want to do that.

But if they’re going to put this kind of stuff out, they ought to know that we know what they’re doing. I know who they’re talking to, and I know what they’re saying. …Some of our folks, including some of the old China lobby, are going to the Vietnamese embassy and saying please notify the president [of South Vietnam] that if he’ll hold out ’til November the second [US election day] they could get a better deal. Now, I’m reading their hand, Everett. I don’t want to get this in the campaign. And they oughtn’t to be doin’ this. This is treason.

Sen. Dirksen: I know.

Why do Democrats cover up Republican treason? Never mind calling them Tea Party Republicans, how about calling them Treason Party Republicans?

I don’t think I approve, but I guess we have to talk about them. YouTube has a collection of the ads.

I knew it would be dangerous for a Jewish CEO to sanction commercials like this. What was he thinking? How many people know what a pescatarian is? If you were offended by the ad before you knew what the word meant, were you or would you be any less offended after you knew?

Along with an email, Alan Grayson sent me the link to his announcement video.

Rep. Alan Grayson announces his candidacy for U.S. Senate. Support his campaign at www.SenatorWithGuts.com

How can you not love a guy like this? Well, yeah, I know he and his wife are having problems, but I mean as a politician.

Counterpunch has the article Chris Hedges on Bernie Sanders and the Corporate Democrats.

“Because the party is completely captive to corporate power,” Hedges said. “And Bernie has cut a Faustian deal with the Democrats. And that’s not even speculation. I did an event with him and Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein and Kshama Sawant in New York the day before the Climate March. And Kshama Sawant, the Socialist City Councilwoman from Seattle and I asked Sanders why he wanted to run as a Democrat. And he said — because I don’t want to end up like Nader.”

“He didn’t want to end up pushed out of the establishment,” Hedges said. “He wanted to keep his committee chairmanships, he wanted to keep his Senate seat. And he knew the forms of retribution, punishment that would be visited upon him if he applied his critique to the Democratic establishment. So he won’t.”

Giving Chris Hedges the benefit of the doubt, it is quite possible that Bernie Sanders did say to him “because I don’t want to end up like Nader.” The second paragraph above has Hedge’s inferences of what Sanders had in mind. I only mention that to raise the possibility that what Sanders said is not exactly how Hedges interpreted it.

Elsewhere in the article Hedges said the following:

“That’s why I was a strong supporter of your independent runs,” Hedges told Nader. “That’s why I voted for (Green Party Presidential candidate) Jill Stein in the last election. But they have to be outside the system. And we have to begin to build movements that are divorced from the Democratic and Republican parties. My fear is that by this time next year, Bernie Sanders is running around once again repeating this mantra of the least worst and stoking fears against whoever the Republican candidate is. And we’ve gone nowhere.”

I don’t understand the idea that voting for Nader or Jill Stein produced any results. I say that knowing full well that even I could end up voting for Stein in 2016.

At least at this stage of the game, supporting Bernie Sanders is the most plausible way to play the game. He could win the nomination. If he doesn’t, then we have to consider what to do next. Going to the next step before we know if he could have won doesn’t seem to be the best strategy available to us right now.

Considering the possibilities Hedges talks about, and being open about them right now is probably a good idea strategically. I think it is better strategy than pretending this doesn’t exist. It always pays to let your candidate know what the consequences might be if they betray your trust in them. Perhaps that is what was left out of the article – the consequences for Bernie Sanders if he turns out not to be the real deal.

Thanks to Cedric Flower for sharing this on his Facebook timeline.