• givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    “The decision-makers are two people — it’s the president and his wife,” one of the sources familiar with the discussions said, adding: “Anyone who doesn’t understand how deeply personal and familial this decision will be isn’t knowledgeable about the situation.”

    The DNC keeps saying it up to Biden…

    Which is the exact opposite of what their lawyers have spent the last decade saying

    We could have—and we could have voluntarily decided that, Look, we’re gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way. That’s not the way it was done. But they could have. And that would have also been their right

    https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/dnc-lawyer-reportedly-said-they-could-have-chosen-between-clinton-sanders-over-cigars-in-back-rooms/

    The DNC can say Biden isn’t the best shot at beating trump, so they’re not going with Biden.

    They just don’t want to.

    They only want to pull the party right, never left.

    Even if that means republicans win.

    But this isnt just a “deeply personal and familial decision” it’s the fucking future of our country and it’s more important than Joe Biden

    • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      Biden is already the incumbent, and the DNC has spent a huge amount of resources supporting him.

      Of course they have to defer to him because he can just run. We’re in a very different position than before the primaries.

    • bobburger@fedia.io
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      3 days ago

      But one DNC lawyer’s argument actually tries to justify the party’s right to be biased on behalf of one primary candidate over another, according to an article from The Young Turks. In other words, they could have chosen their nominee over cigars in a backroom. That’s what the attorney reportedly said in a Florida federal court:

      Do you have a more reliable source than “a laywer said”? Do you know which lawyer is alleged to have said it? Do you know if that lawyer is still working for the DNC? Have the DNC bylaws changed sine 2017 when this quote is alleged to be from?

      You’re making a lot of assumptions based on a poorly sourced anonymous quote from 7 years ago.

      • Krono@lemmy.today
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        3 days ago

        They may be referring to the Wilding v. DNC Services Corp case. DNC lawyers argued that they could overturn the democratic results of the primary if they so choose.

        The DNC won that case.

        • bobburger@fedia.io
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          3 days ago

          To clarify, that case was thrown out becuase plaintiffs lacked standing. I guess that counts as the DNC winning?

          In Wilding v DNC:

          Plaintiffs filed a putative class action alleging that during the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries the DNC and its chairwoman improperly tipped the scales in favor of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was challenging Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination.

          This website reports a similar quote about replacing candidates though with more context:

          [I]f you had a charity where somebody said, Hey, I’m gonna take this money and use it for a specific purpose, X, and they pocketed it and stole the money, of course that’s different. But here, where you have a party that’s saying, We’re gonna, you know, choose our standard bearer, and we’re gonna follow these general rules of the road, which we are voluntarily deciding, we could have — and we could have voluntarily decided that, Look, we’re gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way. That’s not the way it was done. But they could have. And that would have also been their right, and it would drag the Court well into party politics, internal party politics to answer those questions." - DNC attorney Bruce Spiva

          That isn’t the entire quote and it seems to be missing some important context. The link to the transcript is dead unfortunately.

          Even if that is the complete context:

          • I don’t know if what Spiva is saying is legally true. As the Trump trial has shown us just because a lawyer argues something in court does not mean it’s true or legal.
          • Assuming what Spiva is saying was true then and is still true now, he also says “And that would have also been their right, and it would drag the Court well into party politics, internal party politics to answer those questions.” I’m not 100% sure what this means because of the missing context, but it seems to imply simply picking the candidate in a cigar filled room would have brought legal trouble to the DNC.

          It’s still not clear the DNC can unilaterally replace Biden as the candidate without his consent. If they did it would open a whole host of new problems, the least of which is how do the pick the new nominee now that nearly all states have already held their primaries.

          Saying “it’s a simple thing that has to happen, just do it DNC” is just blatant misinformation.

          Also, Spiva appears to no longer work for the DNC. It isn’t clear if their current counsel holds the same opinion.

          • Krono@lemmy.today
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            2 days ago

            To clarify, that case was thrown out becuase plaintiffs lacked standing.

            To further clarify, the court threw out 2 of the claims due to lack of standing. The other 4 claims were dismissed on the merits.

            The court held that the plaintiffs’ claims of fraud, negligent misrepresentation, consumer law violations, and unjust enrichment failed on the merits and directed those claims to be dismissed with prejudice. The court held that plaintiffs’ claims of negligence and breach of fiduciary duty failed for lack of standing,