I don't think it's fair but I do get it. I fully get it. I love Al Franken and have a great amount of respect for him. His political IQ, his general intelligence, and the manner in which he was becoming a force in the senate. He was becoming the Lion of the Senate. He would have been a long-term powerhouse for us. I think he found a great spot that worked well for him and that he was going to retire down the road as a senator. He was simply great at it and a voice we all respect.

With that I have a great respect an appreciation for Gillibrand. It actually goes beyond that. I'm a fan of hers. She is a fighter and unapologetic when fighting for women, transparency, and the greater good. She works extremely hard and isn't afraid of doing the heavy lifting behind the scene. She is the most transparent Senator we have and one of her core issues is to force transparency through rules and legislation. A lot of people don't know how hard at the she works.

She is charged with drafting and leading the way for Democrats to oust Franken. Democrats, for the most part, fell in line. I fully agree that it wasn't her finest hour. I do hold it against her. I also hold it against every single Democrat who signed the letter or individually called for him to resign. I don't view them any differently. I find Senators going to their twitter pages and calling for his resignation, many before the Gillibrand letter, to be every bit as guilty. Others clearly disagree with me on this. I have accepted that.

At first I didn't think that it was going to hurt Gillibrand outside of the online community. I now think I was wrong in that thought process. I still don't see how others get a free pass but I do understand this has made Gillibrand, one of my favorite Senators, a non-starter. It is bigger than I had originally thought.

I'm shelving my support for who I thought was going to be my top choice. I'm not shelving my support for her in general, though she is not my Senator. I have a lot of respect for her. I will say that I'm sorry that her actions have hurt so many, including the party and herself. Actions have consequences. Many of her actions have extremely positive consequences for society. Her action with the letter has hurt many people, and understandably so. I am one of those people. I just see much more in her and seem to give her the pass that everyone seems to give every other Democrat who called for Frankens ouster.

On a last note, I think it would be fun to somehow have "leaners" in our sig line in this forum. I have a couple of candidates I really like. It would give people an understanding of the direction we are thinking about going and stay in-line with the purpose of the sig line in this forum. Probably a bit to much but "undecided" is a pretty encompassing term that leaves out any nuance.

Using her camera to hide her tears, Kinney, standing amid a crowd of devastated Clinton supporters and staffers, photographed her 2016 concession speech at the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan — an emotional end to the Larkspur resident’s 20-month stint working as Clinton’s campaign photographer.

Her pictures were terrible.

“I just was spent,” Kinney recalls. “That’s when the emotion took over and I could have done a better job. I think she’s great. She would have been a great president.”

It took Kinney almost a year after the election to look at the 432,000 photographs she’d taken on the campaign trail, everything from Clinton filming her announcement to run for president at her home in Chappaqua, New York, to her backstage antics with Clinton impersonator Kate McKinnon at “Saturday Night Live,” to the intimate, behind-the-scenes moments with her family.

Marin Independent Journal

#StillWithHer: Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Moments That Sparked a Movement

Barnes and Noble

Marianne Deborah Williamson (born July 8, 1952)[1] is an American spiritual teacher, author, lecturer, entrepreneur, and activist. She has written 13 books,[2] including four New York Times number one bestsellers.[3] She is the founder of Project Angel Food, a volunteer food delivery program that serves home-bound people with AIDS and other life challenging illnesses.[4] She is also the co-founder of The Peace Alliance, a nonprofit grassroots education and advocacy organization supporting peace-building projects.[5]

In 2014, as an Independent, Williamson ran unsuccessfully for the seat of California's 33rd congressional district in the United States House of Representatives elections in California. On January 29, 2019, she announced she was running for the Democratic nomination for the 2020 United States presidential election.[6]

Wikipedia

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS - As your president, I would seek to protect the right of every woman to make her own decisions, in her own way, regarding her reproductive choices. The choice whether or not to terminate a pregnancy is difficult enough without having the government weighing in on the decision.

ADVANCING RACIAL RECONCILIATION TODAY - In many ways, America has continued the process of racial reconciliation begun in the 1960’s. Yet in other ways, we have actually slipped backward. Yes, there are no more colored bathrooms and separate drinking fountains. But we now have mass incarceration; racial disparity in criminal sentencing; lost voting rights; outright voter suppression; and police brutality often focused on black populations.

Tepid solutions are not enough for the times in which we live; we need huge, strategized acts of righteousness, now. Just as Germany has paid $89 Billion in reparations to Jewish organizations since WW2, the United States should pay reparations for slavery. A debt unpaid is still a debt unpaid, even if it’s 150 years later. The legacy of that injustice lives on, with racist policies infused into our systems even to this day. From employment and housing discrimination, to equal access to quality education in underserved communities, to police brutality/prejudice, to lack of fair lending practices, to lack of access to quality healthcare, to insecure voting rights, America has not yet completed the task of healing our racial divide.

For that reason, I propose a $100 billion of reparations for Slavery. $10 billion a year to be disbursed over a period of ten years. An esteemed council of African-American leaders would determine the educational and economic projects to which the money would be given.

Marianne2020

Probably one of the more robust platforms I have seen. Check it out at the link.

She ran in the primary for California's 33rd congressional district in 2014 as an Independent. Ted Lieu won the district in the general. She is now running for President as a Democrat. She is currently holding events in New Hampshire. Instead of "Join the Revolution" she goes with "Join the Evolution."

Here is how she defines her run in the 2014 primary: "In 2014, I ran for Congress in Los Angeles and came in 4th out of a field of 16 in a jungle primary. LA District 33 ended up with the venerable Ted Lieu in that position, so I consider it an all’s-well-that-ends-well experience in my life."

There is still a lot of time, and Biden hasn't entered, but I do see something happening if he does.

I am convinced with our current field that Sanders can lose almost half of his support from last go around in the early states and still do extremely well. Possibly even win. That is not a far stretch with twelve plus candidates, six or more being well funded, with the perception that they are true contenders. I don't think many of those in my corner, the anti-Sanders corner, are really thinking that out. I think that is the way things will shake out. Maybe they are thinking it out and that is why the response to him entering has been so strong.

So lets say Biden jumps in. He will be extremely well funded and will immediately be at or near the top. He will have strong connections and a very strong team. I truly think if he jumps in it will become a race between he and Sanders, leaving our parties best back in the lurch. I don't think Sanders or Biden are even close to the best we have to offer. That is my opinion. Please don't get me wrong, I think Biden is an exemplary human being. That is not what I mean when I say I don't think he is even close to the best we have to offer. I think Biden simply benefits from the fact that he had such a close relationship with someone we all hold up on a pedestal. President Obama. Biden is no Obama.

So if it does become something along those lines I think people like me are going to have a difficult choice in the primaries. No one wants to throw their vote away in a primary and primary votes can be used to stop someone. But who? I truly don't know who I would vote for if it looks like a two way race when it gets to Florida. I really think some people are going to be shocked at how well Sanders does and how that really can create a two person field, out of necessity, pretty quickly. I truly dislike Sanders. I have made no secret of that. But I am much more in-line with him ideologically than I am with Biden, when Biden's whole career is looked at. Biden is an overall economic conservative and I think that is not what we need. At all. Seems people have forgotten many of Biden's past positions on economic issues. I would really be torn.

I don't think I'm the only one who sees how this very well could play out. I was extremely happy about our primary field until Sanders jumped in. He is filling no void at all. If Biden jumps in I really feel some of those I like most will be pushed to the side. It will become the Biden Sanders show. They will be the best funded and have the strongest teams. I cannot vote for an economic conservative unless it is in the general and I have to. Call me ageist, I really don't care. I wish the old white mans club would sit this one out.

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/25301

KEY POINTS:

The RNC has continued to pay Keith Schiller $15,000 a month, long after the purpose of his initial contract had been completed.

A month after the RNC began paying Schiller, he testified before the House Intelligence Committee about Trump’s 2013 trip to Moscow.

The RNC quietly stopped paying both John Pence ($12,000/month), the Vice President’s nephew, and rent at Trump Tower ($37,500/month) after CNBC inquired about the payments.

CNBC: Firm owned by Trump’s longtime bodyguard Keith Schiller has received $225,000 from Republican National Committee

DNC Press Release

By Christina Wilkie

A company owned by Keith Schiller, President Donald Trump’s former longtime bodyguard, has received $225,000 from the Republican National Committee for security consulting since he left his job as White House director of Oval Office operations in September 2017, according to interviews and newly released campaign filings.

Schiller was originally hired by the RNC to help select a site for the 2020 convention. But once the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, was announced in July, Schiller’s firm was kept on to “work on other security needs for the committee,” a party official told CNBC, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to share information that was not included in campaign filings.

The official declined to go into detail about what the committee’s security needs might be but confirmed that the work is ongoing.

CNBC

Article is from Feb 8th.

Bernie Sanders used his first interview since announcing that he would be running for President in 2020 to address some of the doubts that plagued his unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination in the 2016 primaries.

In a wide-ranging conversation with CBS This Morning, the Vermont Senator admitted that mistakes had been made in the handling of allegations of sexism leveled by members of his campaign team in 2016. “It breaks my heart,” he said.

“I will be very honest in telling you that in retrospect, some of the people who were hired should not have been hired. And some women went through experiences that they should not have.”

But Sanders insisted his 2020 bid would not make the same mistakes: “We are going to have the strongest protocols to protect women and anybody else against any form of harassment. We are going to be training every employee who works for us, and we are going to give people who feel that they’ve been harassed an opportunity to talk to people outside of the campaign. This has been an issue that has upset me, and we are going to rectify it in this campaign.”

Time

AKA the Free Hugs Guy!

See his platform here: https://actnow.io/zwZ9BlH

Learn more about the Free Hugs Project here: https://freehugsproject.com/

CEDAR RAPIDS — Democratic U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, a 2020 presidential hopeful, painted herself as someone who can both build political bridges and fight for progressive values at a stop in Cedar Rapids on Monday.

Gillibrand cited her ability to win over voters in rural upstate New York in 2006, when she beat the incumbent Republican there to be elected to the U.S. House. It was her first time running for office, and she said she realized the importance of focusing on policy, not political labels.

“I learned how to bring people together and how to work across the aisle,” she said.

Gillibrand met with potential voters at the Chrome Horse Saloon and Slop House in Cedar Rapids before heading to a stop at the Airliner in Iowa City. Earlier in the afternoon, she held a Q&A session with a handful of people in a private living room in Cedar Rapids, hosted by Progress Iowa and livestreamed online by Now This News.

The Gazette