Tone down the below, and it will help you...

From:philm@neomailbox.ch To: john.podesta@gmail.com Date: 2016-02-10 23:29 Subject: Tone down the below, and it will help you...

I sincerely hope. Of course I'm angry and indignant, but some of the words will be useful to you. Jake's the debate prep guy. Ok, here we go. The debate tomorrow could be make or break. She's going to have to take a chance and call Bernie out, specifically on calling her a shill, an operator, a Republican lite, and corrupt. And a member of the Establishment. She's going to have to kneecap him. She is going to have to take him down from his morally superior perch. She has done so tentatively. She must go further. She must turn her fundraising prowess into an asset, saying it shows loyalty to the Democratic party, where as Bernie only became a Democrat when he realized he couldn't win the Presidency as an Independent. Ask what Bernie's motives are for remaining an Independent all those years. Did he think he was better than his colleagues, better than Barack Obama, etc. Show that Bernie only has a path to the nomination, not to the White House, on money and logistics grounds alone. I was captain of the debate squad. I was considered one of the greatest debaters of my era. (not to brag, just establishing some cred). I know this stuffŠ. A. The dream, the revolution, and the reality. 1) We both want the same thing, the holy grail, which is strict campaign finance limits, and public financing of elections. That is the only way we get our democracy back. That's the promised land. 2) One of us becoming President won't instantly make that happen. Not even close. Even if we were to win the House and Senate, any limits on campaign financing will be struck down by a 5-4 right wing supreme court decision. 3) We may have to wait four, or even eight years, or more, before the elderly right wing justices Brown or Thomas retire or die. And then get a nominee through what may be a very hostile Republican Senate. They know what's at stake. Look at what their doing to President Obama's nominees right now. 4) In the meantime, before we flip the court, we are living in a Citizens United world. 5) And let me remind everyone, that "Citizens United" that was a 30 minute video ad against me. The Republicans know who their absolute worst enemy and nightmare is. They are terrified of me, they have been terrified of me, and full of hatred towards me, since I appeared on the national scene in 1992. Because I'm a women, because I'm strong, because I have the executive capacity and leadership skills to lead progressive change, as I have time and time again. 6) Well, to quote Roosevelt I welcome the Republican hatred of me. They, on the other hand, are not afraid of you, Senator Sanders. Governor Kasich, who came in second in New Hampshire, said "If that guy is their nominee, we will win every state". There is a reason Republicans are running ads against me, and not you. 7) Since we live in a Citizens United world, and will be for four or eight more years, of unlimited dark money, we have to raise massive amounts of funds for progressivism to survive. Not to flourish, but to survive. Anyone who says different is not facing the reality. 8) For let's make this clear. If the Republicans win the Presidency, you can be sure that they will abolish the filibuster, privatize medicare, privatize social security, block grant out medicaid to the states, reverse all movement towards clean energy and preventing climate change, outlaw various forms of abortion, and give us an even more radical 5-4 Supreme Court majority than we have now, that will last another 40 years, when what we have suffered through in the last 40 years has made already America almost unrecognizable to those of us who remember better times. If a Republican wins this Presidential election, the system will become so permanently rigged, that will be no point in having elections. The Republicans will erase all trace of Obama having been in the White House, then they will erase all trace of LBJ being in the White House. Then they will erase all trace that FDR was in the White House. That has been their master plan. It is 40 year old plan which has been executed perfectly. Finally, they have all promised, promised I say, war with Iran, which would pretty much be the end of the world. A full scale attack on yet another Muslim country. Insanity. And it won't even stop Iran from building a bomb, unless they send in 500,000 ground troops, and spend trillions literally occupying Iranian territory. So the Iranians will build a bomb. And then Saudi Arabia will build a bomb. And Egypt will build a bomb. And Turkey will build a bomb. You see where this goes. People say I'm some sort of "hawk", but it was I who put in motion the diplomatic process, which required a lot both stick and carrot, that has led to an agreement with Iran. And they are keeping to their obligations. It's ridiculous to call me a hawk. I stopped us from bombing Iran. Get serious. 9) We can dream all we want, we can hope, and we can be angry, indignant, impatient, yes outraged by the system we have to live in, and how long it will take to fix it. But we have to survive first. B. The record, when we've tried what Bernie's trying 1) Now we have outlined the problem. What is the solution? Senator Sanders says the solution is revolution, led by him personally. 2) Well Senator Sanders, you and I were both there in the late 60's and 70s. There were more millions of people out in the streets, more than there have ever been since. 3) So, in very revolutionary times, when the whole middle class was up in arms, and we were seeing real citizen activism on a large scale, not at little rallies in Iowa in New Hampshire, but out in the streets. Millions and millions. And what happened? 4) We lost the Presidency in 1968 5) We lost the Presidency in 1972 6) Revolution does not therefore, equal, winning the Presidency. Saying, how are you going to win, and answering "Revolution", is a non-answer. 7) The way to win the Presidency, is to follow the lead of President Obama, the greatest Democratic political candidate, and who won the most decisive victories, since Lyndon Johnson 50 years ago. In a system lethally rigged against Democrats. 8) What did Obama do? A lot of inspiration, yes, he inspired many more people than you have inspired. But, in 2012, when Democrats were not so inspired, he won also. In 2008 and 2012 he did exactly the same thing. He opted out of the public finance system, and raised a billion dollars. Dollars came from every single industry that Bernie has decried. The only exclusions were lobbyists and foreign agents. 9) And why did Obama need all that money? Because the data analytics, the logistics,the targeting, the mail, the door knocks, the get out the vote, the arranging of transport, the making sure people are voting in the right place and with the right ID, is all very, very expensive. So is fighting off billions of dark money negative advertising. 9) So I just have one question. Does Bernie Sanders think he is more inspiring of revolution than Martin Luther King? Does he think he's a more talented and inspiring candidate, than Barack Obama? Because his whole campaign is doing the opposite of what Obama and all his brilliant strategists thought was necessary. 10) Let's get down to the nitty gritty. Money. Bernie is outraging me in small dollar donations. He says he doesn't want big dollar donations, or a superpac. I'm happy he's bringing so many new people into political participation. But he has one million donors. Not fifty million donors, not a hundred million donors. One million. 11) Ok, so let's say he spends 30 million a month, let's be generous and call it 40, or even 50 million a month, beating me until the convention late July. That will leave him August, September, October and november. Let's say he starts raising $100 million a month after the convention all from small dollar donations. How is $300 million in hard money, going to beat twice the Republican amount of hard money, plus the billions of superpac ads they will run against them? Where will Bernie find the resources to do the GOTV effort, to follow all the Obama organizing and logistical strategies. For let's be clear, to try to get a third term for a national party in America is very difficult. It's only been done once since World War II. We will need to do everything the Obama team did and more, to have any chance of winning at all. That's just the reality. That is the world we live in. There is no other path to the White House. Any other path is wishful thinking and imagination. Ask President Obama. Ask him! 11) It comes down to a simple thing with Bernie's campaign. The math adds up until he beats me, but then, when it comes to the Republicans, he will run into that little problem my husband always likes to talk about: arithmetic. 12) For let's be clear. We tried unilateral disarmament on super pacs one time before, because of the President's discomfort with them, in 2010. The Republicans were ready with their superpac hundreds of millions. Locked and loaded. Us? Defenseless. We lost the House the Senate, and dozens of states, which is why the House districts are so gerrymandered that we are at the lowest number of Democrats in the House since the 1920s. Obama realized his mistake in 2010, and has been faithfully leading the party, raising for superpacs, for the DSCC, the DCCC, ever since. [13) This is the path to a non-corrupt politics. Win the Presidency in 2016. Win BIG in 2020, taking some statehouses and governorships along with you. Let those now more Democratic statehouses redraw the districts That gives us a fighting chance of taking the House in 2022. It's horrible, it's awful, I can't stand that we have to wait so long. But it is the reality. 14) I understand that no one is satisfied with the pace of change under Obama. He did the best he could. He didn't have the Democratic Senate votes for the Public Option. He barely got Dodd-Frank through, because we had to get one Republican vote to avoid a filibuster. He barely got Obamacare through, and a lot of House Members who loyally voted with the President, knew that that vote would have a high chance of ending their political career. And so it did. 15) Obama needed three Republican votes on the stimulus in the Senate. So instead of being all spending, which would have really jumpstarted the economy, it was half tax cuts, which didn't work as well. Two out of three Republicans who voted for the stimulus, without which the economy would have collapsed, were driven out of office by their own party. C. Now let's tackle the big issue. Corruption and the Democratic party. 1) The fact is, even before Citizens United gutted the McCain Feingold limits, and allowed the creation of super pacs and unlimited dark money, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer had to raise hundreds of millions, much of it from Wall Street, to have the resources to take the House and Senate back, and even to get to a filibuster proof 60 seats. 2) Is Bernie Sanders actually saying that the DSCC is corrupt an entity for which he himself raised money, just this last summer at an exclusive Martha's Vineyard event, full of every sort of Wall Street banker and Washington lobbyist. He did this for the DSCC when he was already running for President on an anti-corruption campaign. 3) Is Bernie Sanders really saying that Obama is corrupt, for taking Wall Street money. Is he saying that Obama is not progressive? Is he saying he's a better candidate, and has a greater strategic mind, than Obama? Is he saying that Nancy Pelosi, who passed more bills out of her Majority achieved partially with Wall Street money, than anyone since Lyndon Johnson, is corrupt? A corporate shill? Is he saying this of all our Senators, our House Members, our Governors, our state legislators, our mayors, our judges, our county superintendents, our sheriffs? Is he really saying that he is a better man than all these people? Purer? The absolute sheriff of progressive. That he and he alone has the power to designate you as progressive or not. 4) How dare you show such contempt for your own party. 5) Ah, but I forgot, the Democrats are not your party. You were a Senator as an Independent for xx years, in a safely blue state where you easily could have been a Democrat. 6) Perhaps, in your moral self-righteousness, you thought that the Democrats were below you, until, that is, you wanted to become President, and realized that as, an Independent, you couldn¹t win. So you finally, and cynically, embrace the Democratic party and run in our primaries. 7) Let's be clear. Who is the loyal one here? I have been a member of ONE party my whole adult life. The Democratic party. This is my party. I have soldiered for Democrats in races all over the country. I have taken bullet after bullet. I'm still standing. I am the bogeyman of the Republican world, the enemy, the devil, the bitch. And yet, somehow you imply that I am below you in my morals, that I can be bought, that I am really only a faker, Republican-lite, when it comes to being a progressive. This is a complete distortion of my record. You know what it is? It is a cynical lie. And one more thing: 8) How DARE you, Senator Sanders, call me part of the Establishment. We both lived in the 60's. We know what the word "Establishment" means? The Establishment was all the racist, sexist, homophobic, war-mongering elite that had an absolute hold on political power in many parts of this country. Practically all of it. I FOUGHT that that White Male Supremacist Establishment with all my might and with all my power. I am not a "member" of the establishment. The establishment, that exists in one party, the Republicans. It is that party, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Corporate Oligopoly, and does their bidding automatically, who are the enemy.How dare you call me that. How dare you show such contempt. You might as well call Nancy Pelosi a member of the "Democratic Establishment", and without her, the country would have gone to absolute ruin during the financial crisis. Not to underemployed people with incomes not rising enough, but to absolute catastrophe, to 20 or 30% unemployment. Worldwide financial crisis. Let's remember who we are, what team we play for. 9) To say anyone who ever took money from Wall Street or Pharma is corrupt, is to indict the entire Democratic party. Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, all our governors, all our Senators, all our House members. You talked in your New Hampshire speech of unifying the party. You are not a unifier. You are a divider. You are wiping out party unity, by arrogantly, arrogantly I say, putting yourself above me, and every other Democrat, as impure, as not revolutionary enough. D. Moving forward. 1) $300 million dollars is sitting in a Democratic superpac, Priorities USA. If Bernie is the nominee, I would make sure that all that money became available to him. I would get behind him and support him with all my might. As I did for Obama, after a bitter primary. I have a track record here. I am the loyal Democrat. I take the hits, even from my own team, but I keep going. 2) Bernie says he doesn¹t want a superpac. 3) Except that, in Iowa, when Democrat-led superpacs ran ads against me, and in favor of him, did he tell them to stop? I don't remember hearing them telling them to stop. More cynicism and hypocrisy. 4) So I ask, which Bernie is it? The DSCC fundraising Bernie, the Bernie who allows superpacs to fight on his behalf, while at the same time saying he doesn't want any of their money. 5) And if he doesn't make use of that priorities money, and raise a lot more hard money, both for himself and all our candidates and legislators, if he refuses to LEAD the DEMOCRATIC PARTY, every Democrat in the country is going to get taken out the the woodshed, including him. And the Republicans know it. Which is why they have always, and will always, run ads against me. I am the biggest danger to their domination. They know it. Listen to our common enemies. They speak clearly and shamelessly about which candidate they want to face. 6) This is the reality. The fight for a corruption free system is a long, grinding 8 to ten year fight. The Republicans have had 40 years to put everything in place to stop it. It can be overturned by one election. We will have to grind this out, day after day, endless, backbreaking labor. It is exactly the kind of work I am suited for, exactly the kind of painstaking, backbreaking, hellish labor that I have shown I can do over, and over, and over again. 7) To sum up. Bernie's revolution is imaginary. Yes turn out was up. But not the way it was when Obama was running. And Obama had the wind at his back, with an unpopular war, and a Republican-caused financial crisis. Bernie's political strategy to win the White House, not to beat me, but to take the next step and win the General Election, is based on presuppositions that do not tally with our political reality.