Tulsi Gabbard: I’m leaving the Democratic Party

[BengalYankee]

(10-17-2022, 02:12 AM)tms Wrote: If she was never in the party to begin with, can she really leave? If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it... lol

I remember during the Dem debates she was just parroting Putin's lines. I kinda work in that sector so they're easy to spot. It seemed like her #1 priority. Then at the beginning of the Ukraine war, she posted a video urging Putin to stop the bombings/invasion: "Alright you've made your point! You're going too far now!" kinda thing. I was like, wtf is going on here?! Obviously her denials are disingenuous. Why does she think he's listening to her?! It must be because he is! I assume she finally recognized that she had been pawned to start a war.

My only questions revolve around the logistics of it. How are those relationships born? Who contacts whom? To what end? Are there always people in government (or in her case, formerly in but still around government) who act as mouthpieces for Russia/China, and vice versa (i.e., that we do the same thing out there)? Are both parties doing it? I imagine the answer to the last few questions is YES, if for no other reason than that they don't call each other out for it. Like it's an accepted- albeit unfortunate- reality of our system.

Heck, nobody called Tulsi out for it at the debates and it would have been the easiest place to do it. Maybe they didn't want the headache. Maybe they knew she stood no chance and it would have been a waste of time. But I wish someone like Buttigieg or Inslee had just cut her off, "Enough already, Vladimir Gabbard! We have enough problems here without having to worry about your propaganda too!" Ah well, maybe next time. Lol

Democratic National Committee[edit]
On January 22, 2013, Gabbard was unanimously elected to a four-year term as a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee.[147] In September 2015, she criticized chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz's decision to hold only six debates during the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries, compared with 26 in 2008 and 15 in 2004,[148][149] and to exclude any candidate who participated in a non-DNC sanctioned debate from all future DNC-sanctioned debates. Gabbard released a statement about the heated and public disagreements surrounding the debates in a Facebook post in 2015.[150][151]
Following her public criticisms of the debate process, Gabbard was reported to have been either "disinvited" or asked to "consider not coming" to the October 13, 2015, Democratic debate in Las Vegas.[152][153] In an interview with The New York Times, she spoke of an unhealthy atmosphere, saying, "no one told me I would be relinquishing my freedom of speech and checking it at the door" in taking the job.[154] Gabbard privately wrote to Wasserman Schultz, accusing her of violating the DNC's duty of neutrality by favoring Hillary Clinton. This letter later became public in leaked emails published by WikiLeaks.[155][156]
Gabbard resigned as DNC vice chair on February 28, 2016, in order to endorse Senator Bernie Sanders for the nomination for President of the United States.[157][158] On that same day, she appeared on Meet the Press and discussed why she was stepping down.[159] She was the first congresswoman to endorse Sanders,[158] and later gave the nominating speech putting his name forward at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.[160]
In July 2016, Gabbard launched a petition to end the Democratic Party's process of appointing superdelegates in the nomination process.[161] She endorsed Keith Ellison for DNC chair in the 2017 chairmanship elections.[162]
Gabbard was assigned as Bernie Sanders's running mate in California for any write-in votes for him.[163] Shortly after the election, she was mentioned as a possible presidential candidate for 2020.[164][165] In the 2016 United States presidential election, a Minnesota elector voted for Gabbard for vice president, but had that vote invalidated and given to Tim Kaine.[166]