I don't think Barney Frank should lose his platform gig...but he brought all this on himself.

[Ken Burch]

After all, Barney has based most of his career on arguing that progressives should shut up, know our place, and settle for whatever crumbs we are given.

He has spent decades demanding that progressives stop defending our principles, insisting that we should be ok with the party ditching progressive values on the majority of policy proposals(as it did in the Nineties), that we should accept corporate control of life as the natural order of things, and basically telling us to just give up and go away.

And he was involved, back in the Sixties, with the attempt by Allard Lowenstein to kick everyone on the left out of SNCC(an effort which, if it had succeeded, would have left SNCC standing for nothing and bowing and scraping to white establishment leaders). The efforts of Frank and Lowenstein to ideologically castrate SNCC helped create the chain of events that led to most white progressives(including Bernie) being kicked out of the freedom movement by the end of 1966.

Barney Frank is the "liberal" who always ends up carrying water for the right and kicking the left when it is down.

And the sad thing is, he never needed to be that guy to get things passed.

[haikugal]

1. Yes!!! Thank you too much for putting my thoughts into words! Frank...*spit* nt

[underthematrix]

2. Barney is a Democrat and it's a big tent

because you apparently see yourself as a progressive rather than a Democrat with a progressive agenda.

Barney is on the committee because he's one of the DEM party's national leaders and brilliant.

I want them to get rid of Cornel West whom I hate with a passion just like a large part of the AA community but I don't think I'm going to get what I want.

[Ken Burch]

3. I wasn't calling for Barney to be removed.

Just pointing out the things he has done(none of which he ever needed to do)to turn millions of progressives against him...starting with the pointless removal of leftists SNCC that Frank and Lowenstein tried to instigate.

The Democratic Party doesn't need to stick it to the left to win. It never did.

[underthematrix]

5. Well I'm definitely a leftie but I'm a very mature leftie

I think most progressives or lefties are like me. They expect to get some of want they want but not all of what they want. That's how it works in the real world. They're NOT gonna put a delusional racist mantoddler in the WH just because Barney did or said something they didn't like.

[Ken Burch]

9. Nothing I'm saying here is about Trump.

I'm gonna be working to stop Trump no matter who gets nominated. But the Clinton campaign has nothing to gain in that from making a big show of giving the Sanders campaign little or nothing in the platform. There is no large group of voters who'd vote for HRC but ONLY if she made a big show of "stopping all that liberal nonsense".

The days when people wanted the Democratic Party to be just barely different from the Republicans are gone and gone forever. Nobody wants 1992 back.

[Tavarious Jackson]

10. Hillarys voters are larger than Bernie's

Why do people keep saying she does not have a large group of votes? She has all of them except white men.

[QC]

19. It's not nice to make fun of obese people.

It could just be a glandular issue, you know.

[underthematrix]

17. The Democratic Party is so diverse that there

are leadership voices from pretty much every group. How is that anything like Republicans?

I mention TRUMP because neither HRC or Bernie are the enemies. Our enemy and the enemy of the American people is the Republican Party and the face of that party is NAZI Trump

[annavictorious]

4. Frank is not going to lose his "platform gig"

and your talking points about him are bewildering.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/05/dnc-rejects-call-from-sanders-campaign-to-boot-barney-frank-from-convention-committee/

[Ken Burch]

6. It's all there in his record.

Barney Frank's whole public rep is as the liberal who keeps telling liberals they should stop BEING liberals.

We don't need that.

[QC]

15. He was also very, very shitty to trans people,

another constituency that he told to sit down, shut up, and and settle.

He's basically a Fox News liberal, the Alan Colmes of the Congress.

What did surprise me, though, is the sheer tone deafness of choosing Mr. Revolving Door for such a prominent role in an election in which corruption is such an important concern. (And let's not even talk about putting someone like Fast Eddie Rendell in charge of the convention.)

[metroins]

7. Barney is loyal

My favorite? No.

Dependable when you need him? Yes.

[babylonsister]

8. I remember many times Barney Frank

stood up for Dems.

I will not comment on the current situation, but I'm not going to ditch him under the bus for something he did in the 60s.

IIRC, Senator Byrd had some issues he had to overcome from his youth, and I managed to care a great deal about him.

[bjo59]

11. Barney Frank, former politician and current board member of Signature Bank.

In February 2016, The New York Times reported that:

Signature Bank has been a darling of Wall Street in the 15 years since it opened its first branch in Manhattan.

Sizzling deposit and loan growth has transformed it from a start-up to one of the biggest American banks, with $33 billion in assets. Last year, profit hit a record $373 million.

But all of its success — partly a result of its mantra to deliver top-notch service to its small and midsize business clientele — could not shield it from a Ponzi scheme that lost $66 million of investor money and sent a money manager to federal prison for three and a half years for securities fraud.

In a lawsuit in a Florida state court, the investors are suing Signature, accusing it of helping the money manager pull off his Ponzi scheme by ordering him to shift money around the dozens of accounts he kept at the bank to cover long-term overdrafts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/24/business/dealbook/signature-bank-sued-over-connection-to-ponzi-scheme.html?_r=0

Frank joined the board of Signature Bank in July 2015. About the bank he said:

“I like this business model in particular,” Mr. Frank said in an interview. “They don’t get involved with exotic derivatives and credit default swaps.” He also described himself as “very supportive of banking.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2015/06/17/barney-frank-yes-that-barney-frank-joins-a-bank-board/

Sigh. Perhaps it's more of a problem that Barney Frank is notorious in his distaste for Bernie Sanders, a Democratic Party candidate with 46% of the delegates so far. I guess Frank does represent what the Democratic Party is quite well.

[Demsrule86]

12. The DNC

turned Bernie down. They won't remove Malloy or Barney.

[tandem5]

13. The dreaded quotation mark encrusted liberal title of shame. Bus meet Barney, Barney meet

*honk honk crash bump bump slam screams... sirens*

[Ed Suspicious]

16. Proudly he will remain under the wheels of my bus.

[joshcryer]

14. Jesus Christ.

This shit is beyond stupid at this point.

[geek tragedy]

18. You're obviously not familiar with his record in Congress.

His voting record is more liberal than is that of Sanders.