Oh, it’s totally freedom of speech. But freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom to broadcast your speech on public property without exception.

If they hung the banner on their house or private property, there would be nothing to be done to stop them.
But you can’t hang a banner from the governments property without their permission, which must be given in a manner impartial to the content on the banner beyond any compelling interests like “no hanging very distracting banners where it could cause accidents”.

They didn’t ask, so they can have their banner removed just as though they hung it from the flagpole in front of the courthouse.

They’re being prosecuted because a racial component to a crime is an aggravating factor that makes it more appealing to prosecutors.
So their claim is entirely correct: they’re being prosecuted because their crime was minor but made worse by being racist. We’ve already decided that it’s reasonable for the government to be particularly harsh on racist crimes because it singles out a type of behavior that’s particularly harmful to society.

Do you think that source contradicts what I said?

Mr. Miranda asked Ms. Wasserman Schultz whether they should call CNN to complain about a segment the network aired in which Mr. Sanders said he would oust the chairwoman if he were elected. “Do you all think it’s worth highlighting for CNN that her term ends the day after the inauguration, when a new D.N.C. Chair is elected anyway?” Mr. Miranda asked. Ms. Wasserman Schultz responded by dismissing the senator’s chances. “This is a silly story,” she wrote. “He isn’t going to be president.”

Shocking. She didn’t speak kindly of a person who publicly attacked her, and opted to leave the story alone instead of doing anything.

Same information, but cast with additional context

Most of the shocking things mentioned in the emails were only mentioned, and are then dismissed.

Your mistaking opinions and preference bias, which all people have, for unfair bias. Do you actually expect that the people who run a political party don’t have an opinion about politics?

The coin thing didn’t happen.. At best she won six out of a dozen, which is what you would expect. The reality is more complicated.

You grossly mischaracterize the agreement.
From the article:

This does not include any communications related to primary debates – which will be exclusively controlled by the DNC.

Nothing in this agreement shall be construed to violate the DNC’s obligation of impartiality and neutrality through the Nominating process. All activities performed under this agreement will be focused exclusively on preparations for the General Election and not the Democratic Primary. Further we understand you may enter into similar agreements with other candidates.

HFA will be granted complete and seamless access to all research work product and tools (not including any research or tracking the DNC may engage in relating to other Democratic candidates).

In other words, her campaign agreed to give the DNC money to prepare for the general election, and in exchange they got to look at those preparations.
This was definitely the Clinton campaign assuming she would be the candidate, but it’s not exactly a smoking gun for financial impropriety regarding the primary.

Honestly, if your campaign can’t find a lawyer or accountant who can understand campaign finance management, you probably actually shouldn’t be in charge of a country. The financial arrangements weren’t particularly obtuse or obfuscated for moving millions of dollars between multiple political entities in multiple states.

Quoting a phrase from an internal email out of context makes you seem disingenuous. The emails that were stolen show people being mean, but it also shows that they were consistently not rigging anything. Or does someone making a shitty suggestion and then a higher ranking member of the party saying “no” not fit the narrative your drawing? Or that the only time they talked about financial schemes was after the Sanders campaign alleged misconduct?

In context, Sanders told CNN that if he was elected, she would no longer be the chair person. The internal comment was “this is a silly story. Sanders isn’t going to be president” at a time where he was already loosing.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz has to resign.

She did. Eight years ago.

Tldr, party leadership preferred Clinton over Obama. Turns out that preference without misconduct doesn’t have much impact.

you refer to a 76 year old career politician like Sanders as a new person.

Oh please. It’s even in the bit that you quoted: new to the party. I act like he was new to the party because he was, and his campaign was run by people who didn’t know the party structures. When their inexperience with the party tools led to them not taking advantage of them, they cried misconduct for the other campaigns knowing about them.

Oh, definitely. Not just possible, they weren’t even looking for that. They were entirely looking for what the debate did to preferences and opinions directly about the candidates.

I mostly brought it out as an example of the headline not capturing the whole message of how it impacted voters. Or didn’t impact, rather.

So what were the advantages? The usual one I hear listed is superdelegates, which doesn’t matter if more people voted for the winner, or that they didn’t proactively inform his campaign about funding tricks that the Clinton campaign already knew about.

Are you saying that Clinton was an independent who just happened to align with the party for her entire political career?

I’m not sure you know how political affiliation or “people” work. Being a member of the party for decades vs being a member for months matters. Those are called “connections”, and it’s how most politicians get stuff done: by knowing people and how to talk to them.

The point of a primary is to determine who the candidate is, not who the party is more aligned with. Party leadership will almost always be more aligned with the person who has been a member longer, particularly when that person has been a member of part leadership themselves. It’s how people work. You prefer a person you’ve known and worked with for a long time over a person who just showed up to use your organization, and by extension you, for their own goals.
We have rules to make sure that those unavoidable human preferences don’t make it unfair.

The Obama campaign is a good example. He didn’t have the connections that Clinton did, so party leadership favored her. Once they actually voted, he got more so leadership alignment didn’t matter and he was the candidate. He then worked to develop those connections so that he and the party were better aligned and work together better, and he won. Yay!

So what rules did they break for Clinton? What advantages did she have over Sanders that she didn’t have over Obama?
Which of those advantages weren’t just "new people to the party didn’t know tools the party made available?”

Like what? Did she get votes for him thrown out?

People have been saying for years that she had an advantage and so it wasn’t fair, but those advantages seem to ignore that more people voted for her.

He was an independent running as a Democrat, and then claiming it’s unfair when the Democratic party was more aligned with the person who had always been a Democrat.

George Washington eschewed political parties because he didn’t want to establish a precedent where his choice as first president set the standard everyone else had to conform to, and there’s a little irony in people holding him up as an example in that light more than 200 years later.

He, and the other founders largely, disliked political parties in their entirety, not just having some specific number of them.
They also built the system that enshrined the two party dichotomy as the only option, actively sought to ensure that the “right” people could override the will of the people if needed, and founded the parties they had previously argued against.
They are far from infallible bastions of correctness in this matter.

Oh yeah, he’s totally not a viable candidate, but he does have an actual political philosophy and opinions that are surprisingly agreeable. He just lacks the actual political fortitude or will to get elected.

Dude, have you actually read vermin Supremes platform, or rather his actual political philosophy and beliefs?

I read through some of them once, and had the horrifying realization that the contemporary political figure that I think I agree with most closely is:

• unelectable
• best known for wearing a boot on his head

I couldn’t find where a lot of his actual opinions got discussed a bit more formally, but this random video snippet from 2008 does a decent job capturing it.

If I had (got? Got. I’d love to need to make the choice) to pick between a democratic socialist or a social anarchist, I think I’d honestly lean towards the social anarchist, all things being equal.

They did a lot of the pre-selection of people beforehand. The headline most places are running with is “flash poll says trump won”, but if you actually read the conclusions, it’s that “flash poll says trump won, more Republicans watched the debate by about a ten percent margin, and no one changed their opinions about fitness for office or who they’re voting for”.

True. But they were going to have the same criticism of Biden regardless.

It’s part of the reason I didn’t even watch. Looking over the polling, the debate didn’t really change anyone’s opinions on anything to any significant degree.

See, you’re talking partisan politics, I’m talking “you literally have to pick someone”. We’ve had these candidates before. You already know which one you’re going to vote for. You picked your side four years ago when you were asked the same question.

Beyond that though, there’s “parties” and then theirs “sides”. One side is xenophobic, homophobic and actively wishes harm on a lot of people. The other side doesn’t, for all their flaws.
There are more parties than there are sides in the past few elections.

By saying you think you should vote for someone who will be good for everyone, you’ve picked a side. The side that doesn’t want to do good for only the “right” people, or make sure only the “right” people get hurt.
The only question is if you’ll vote for that side to win, or if you’ll let idealism or anger drive you to vote otherwise.

People keep saying Bernie could have won, but he didn’t beat Clinton.

… Picking a side is literally what an election is.

Does it really count as “lucid” if you enunciate your lies, fabrications, misrecollections about… everything?

I did two full loops once while I was learning to drive. I wasn’t confident enough to merge over without a lot more room than the people around me were willing to part with, so I just stayed in the lane, took the next ramp and cycled through.
Then it happened again.

Fortunately it was my dad and not like, an instructor who could grade me or something.

It’s a delightful PR gimmick by a most definitely not a tech company, since there’s not much cutting edge technology going on in the world of “flamethrowers are perfectly legal in America and that’s our business model”.

In addition to strapping a flamethrower to a generic quadruped robot, they also strapped one to a drone.

Everyone ate it too. The mockery was because

• they were messy to eat
• they were staples commonly eaten
• they were made and sold by black people early in their steps of economic independence following slavery.
• racism doesn’t have to make sense.

If you hate someone, anything they do can be something you use to express your hate, even if you do it to.

I believe that’s why people are pushing for a week of early voting, and the ability to vote by mail with postage paid.
Also, if you increase the number of polling stations and keep them available longer, the wait goes down.
We can also pass laws to make it so employers must give workers time to vote at the workers discretion.

Most of what you describe is the result of an effort to make voting harder to keep turnout low. The way to fix it is to make it easier, not to make it less secure.

In a smaller local election a few cycles back, I got to trial a paper backed electronic voting machine they were testing out for people who have dexterity or vision problems.

You basically got the same paper ballot as everyone else, but then you slipped it into the machine and it colored the bubbles for you after you selected the option on the screen.
Then you took your piece of paper out and handled it like a ballot filled in by hand.

Wasn’t networked and didn’t see anything that could tie you to a vote.
I got to share my appreciation for the concept, but concern about difficulty verifying it filled things out correctly, and the potential for touch screens to be difficult to use or act funny, all the difficulties of ux work to handle fixing an error, and the need for the UI to be exceptionally clear, which was difficult on the smaller screen with the larger font.
I think it also has screen reader support, but I didn’t use it, so I’m not sure.