{"id":200546,"date":"2021-03-08T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-09T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/03\/08\/when-you-follow-a-defeat-with-an-own-goal\/"},"modified":"2021-03-08T19:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-03-09T00:00:00","slug":"when-you-follow-a-defeat-with-an-own-goal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/03\/08\/when-you-follow-a-defeat-with-an-own-goal\/","title":{"rendered":"When You Follow a Defeat with an Own Goal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>  Following years or organizing,   <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reviewjournal.com\/news\/politics-and-government\/nevada\/whitmer-picked-to-lead-nevada-democrats-in-major-power-shift-2296277\/\">progressive Democrats in Nevada took 4 of 5 of the leadership positions in     the state Democratic Party, out organizing the Democratic Party     establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) there<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>  The Nevada Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party   establishment) then shot itself in the foot by   <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2021\/03\/08\/nevada-democratic-party-dsa\/\">convincing the entire staff of the party to quit<\/a>.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>  You see, you want your people there, picking up the mail, conducting polls,   and managing the budget, because they are the ones best placed to sabotage the   new leadership, as evidenced by the years long campaign of sabotage against   Jeremy Corbyn by the professional staff of the Labour Party in the UK. <\/p>\n<p>  Not only will the new leaders be able to hire people that they trust, but   should they refuse to resign when there is a change of power, they will be   difficult, or at least embarrassing, to fire:&nbsp; <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>  <span style=\"color: #2b00fe;\">Not long after Judith Whitmer won her election on Saturday to become chair     of the Nevada Democratic Party, she got an email from the party\u2019s executive     director, Alana Mounce. The message from Mounce began with a note of     congratulations, before getting to her main point. <\/p>\n<p>She was     quitting. So was every other     <a href=\"https:\/\/nvdems.com\/party\/staff\/\">employee<\/a>.     <b><span style=\"font-size: 100%; font-variant: small-caps;\">And so were all the consultants<\/span><\/b>. And the staff would be taking severance checks with them, thank you very     much. <br \/><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Emphasis mine)&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>  As an aside, make sure that the consultants stay resigned.&nbsp; They are   useless. <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>  <span style=\"color: #2b00fe;\">On March 6, a coalition of progressive candidates backed by the local     chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America took over the leadership of     the Nevada Democratic Party, sweeping all five party leadership positions in     a contested election that evening.     <span style=\"color: black;\">[I have gotten conflicting reports on this, it appears that the party       Treasurer might be the old guard candidate]<\/span>    Whitmer, who had been chair of the Clark County Democratic Party, was     elected chair. The establishment had prepared for the loss, having     recently<a href=\"https:\/\/thenevadaindependent.com\/article\/say-goodbye-to-the-most-effective-democratic-party-in-the-country\">      moved $450,000 out of the party\u2019s coffers<\/a>    and into the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee\u2019s account. The DSCC     will put the money toward the 2022 reelection bid of Sen. Catherine Cortez     Masto, a vulnerable first-term Democrat.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>  Again, asking for unity, and when your side does not win, sabotage the   winners. <\/p>\n<p>  Democrats <b>never<\/b> do this for Republicans, but false Democrats always do   this to <b>real<\/b> Democrats.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>  <span style=\"color: #2b00fe;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Despite the pushback, Whitmer ultimately won the election,     in which the state party\u2019s governing members voted. In the certified     election results, she received 244 to Segerblom\u2019s 214; Jacob Allen won first     vice chair by 101 votes; Dr. Zaffar Iqbal, on Whitmer\u2019s progressive slate,     was reelected second vice chair by 127 votes; Ahmad Ad\u00e9 won secretary by 39     votes; and Howard Beckerman won treasurer by three votes.     <span style=\"color: black;\">[Again, note, the <i>Las Vegas Review-Journal<\/i> story has Beckerman       losing.]<\/span><\/p>\n<p>After the results, Mounce sent the email making clear that     everyone on the small staff had resigned, including the party operations     director, communications director, research director, and finance     director.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>  An interesting coda to this is that, &#8220;<i>The Democratic National Committee hired Mounce as their new political     director last month.<\/i>&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>  The final word on all of this is a reworking of Lyndon Johnson an old Lyndon   Johnson quote:&nbsp; &#8220;It is better to have them outside the tent pissing in   than it is to have them inside the tent pissing in.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>  Reid&#8217;s machine will try to take power back, and they will do so until the sun   collapses into a cinder, but with all of their inside people gone, it will become much harder for them to do so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following years or organizing, progressive Democrats in Nevada took 4 of 5 of the leadership positions in the state Democratic Party, out organizing the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) there. The Nevada Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) then shot itself in the foot by convincing the entire &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1000,975,987,1119,978],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections","category-employment","category-fail","category-iron-law-of-institutions","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200546"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}