[Cross-posted from Daily Kos]

By now, most of you have seen this video:
[video:https://youtu.be/sO-sgjJ36eo]

First off, I wonder why Bill hasn’t told Hillary you never point at people. You use a closed fist with the thumb out. He pioneered the gesture.

Eva Resnick-Day, the activist who confronted Hillary has written a post recounting her experience and what she was trying to do:

I care deeply about tackling climate change and I’m deeply concerned about the state of our democracy. I work for Greenpeace USA as a democracy organizer. I do not work for and am in no way affiliated with the Sanders campaign, as Clinton seemed to suggest in her response.

Greenpeace USA, along with 20 other organizations, launched the pledge to #FixDemocracy, asking all presidential candidates to reject future fossil fuel contributions, champion campaign finance reform, and defend the right to vote for all.

When we launched the campaign, Sanders signed the pledge immediately. Hillary’s campaign responded, but did not sign. Unsurprisingly, the Republican presidential candidates who won’t even admit that climate change is real — while real communities on the frontlines are already impacted — did not respond to our request.
Eva was following up on that pledge.

Now, probably for the first time, Greenpeace activists are being panned on this site. We loved Greenpeace when they helped uncover information that forced David Koch off the board of the Museum of Natural History. We cheered them when they uncovered how Charles Koch’s lobbyists were infiltrating higher ed. We took our hats off to the bold Greenpeace activists who dangled off a bridge to prevent a Shell ice-breaker to leave port and help drill in the Arctic.

But now that they are trying to make Hillary Clinton a BetterDemocratTM, they are suddenly persona non-grata.

And what exactly was the “smear” from Greenpeace ? Hillary has indeed taken over well over 1 million from lobbyists for oil and gas companies:

Number of oil, gas and coal industry lobbyists that have made direct contributions to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign: 58

58 registered oil, coal and gas lobbyists have personally given $138,400 to the Clinton campaign.
Of those 58, 11 are bundlers.
11 lobbyists have bundled $1,327,210 in contributions to the Clinton campaign.
43 lobbyists have contributed the maximum allowed ($2,700).
This includes:

Lobbyists who have reported lobbying for the oil and gas industry – both in-house company lobbyists and hired lobbyists from “K-Street firms.”
No one is contesting this, though the Hillary campaign keeps trying to conflate the lobbyist contributions with those from people working at Oil and Gas companies (that counts for another, quite separate $309,107).

Why do we suddenly believe that funds from lobbyists should be unmentionable or shouldn’t count? Or that Greenpeace is somehow smearing Hillary when they say (correctly) that she did not sign the pledge which Bernie did?

But of course, these are rhetorical questions. I know why Greenpeace is suddenly unwelcome.

It’s Standard Operating Procedure to isolate and diminish the left when there’s a challenge to a centrist candidate. It happens all the time.

Whenever someone has the temerity to say that a candidate might not inspire the left, they are instantly pounced on. You'll be handing the election to Trump! Don’t you remember Nader!!!

Questioning Hillary's electability because the left might stay at home is verboten. But if you say Bernie’s unelectable because “people” might stay home rather than vote for a “socialist”. Well, you’ll be mobbed by a virtual chorus of nodding sages. They are mirror-image arguments about turning off voters at different ends of the ideological spectrum. Yet one is acceptable, the other not. Besides, like I’ve argued before, the one dimensional left/center/right model is quite flawed.

There are two possible lessons from the 2000 election for Democrats:

We have to make sure those stupid voters on the left are scared out of their wits enough that they don’t vote for a third-party candidate.
We have to appeal to the left so that they don’t feel the need for a third party candidate.
You can guess which one people invariably reach. The third possible lesson, that Gore might have been a bad candidate because he lost his home state and would carry the baggage of the Lewinski scandal is similarly unmentionable.

Btw, that is what happened to Mcgovern too. The establishment abandoned him before and after the Eagleton fiasco. So he's now held up as an example of unelectability.

Okay, you can now return to phonebanking for Bernie!