More Last-Minute Bauman Slurs, Spin, and Shenanigans

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It’s the morning of the day of the vote for CDP Chair, and desperation tactics abound.  Here’s a running total.

(1) More Complaints About the Alleged “Pedarasrty” Slurs

Bauman supporter Casey Robinson of the IE — see, it IS possible to name a source! — took to Facebook this morning to take offense to various anonymous Twitter postings that popped up overnight once again asserting without evidence that Eric Bauman is a pederast.  No Ellis supporters report having heard these rumors and none lay claim to then.  There is no way that they help Ellis at this point — they only raise sympathy for Bauman — so there’s little reason to presume that her supporters are behind them.  And since Jeff LeTourneau’s charge to this effect was deleted from the “Forward.is” website, no direct accusation seems to exist, only plenty of innuendo.

This was my reply to Casey Robinson:

“All this does is distract from the real issues and build sympathy for Bauman. I don’t believe that either major campaign is itself involved. (What Lenore Albert – who is now clearly running only to get in shots against Ellis – might be doing is anyone’s guess.)

“Bauman could have cleared up the mystery of who was behind the alleged first wave of reports of this attack against him – “alleged” because all but one of them came to his own notice second-hand – two weeks ago. For whatever reason, he chose not to.

“Now, anonymous cowards are apparently back at it again – and we have no idea whether it is the stupidest Kimberly Ellis supporters in the galaxy or especially craven Bauman supporters trying to “do him a favor” by making anti-gay bigotry the issue, rather than the actual issues.

“I wish that we had been able to track down these rumors when they first arose, the better to quash them – but no one outside of the Bauman campaign knows whence they came. I join Ellis in denouncing them, and repeat that they should have been treated with appropriate gravity two weeks ago, rather than being left to hang as an amorphous cloud of suspicion against Bauman’s opponents generally.”

CASEY’S REPLY was along the lines of “Greg returns blaming the victim again.”

I responded along the lines of my previous post here:

“Greg returns TAKING WHAT HAPPENED SERIOUSLY! Bauman called on people to stand against this sort of thing. Ellis immediately did. I immediately slammed the two people – total – who could be cited using sexualized tropes to snipe at Bauman at all. (It turned out that they were both gay men engaging in “within the group” sniping, which puts a different spin on it.

“What I wanted to do was to be able to track down any attacks to their sources and have them face a reckoning. But the Bauman campaign wanted the source of the accusations to stay as amorphous and suspicious as possible — despite having the means to expose their sources.

“”Blaming the victim,” Casey? I pity Bauman for having advisors who thought it was useful to get into a “who has been insulted more grievously?” campaign with a Black woman who grew up in Tennessee. And I very proud of her for not responding in kind.”

And so on:

(2) “Where was Kimberly Ellis when Bauman was arrested?”

Robinson separtely raised a new (to me, at least) line of attack: Bauman was once arrested protesting fracking, and “WHERE WAS KIMBERLY?” when that momentous event took place?

Putting aside that Ellis faces certain potential consequences upon being arrested — such as, oh, a substantially greater likelihood of death — than Bauman does, this is a weird, bogus and desperate-seeming sort of attack.  It also reeks of privilege by depicting Bauman’s stunt as some sort of significant personal risk.  I explained in my reply:

“What continuing negative effects did he face after his arrest? Seriously: does it remain on his criminal record or was it dropped or expunged? Did he spend a weekend in jail waiting for arraignment, or was he released immediately on his own recognizance? Did he pay a hefty fine, a token fine, or none at all?

“Getting arrested for a cause — like Thoreau, the suffragettes, Gandhi, King, Chavez, Mandela, the Stonewall resisters, anti-nuke protesters, DAPL protestors, and so many others — is about as sacred as it gets among advocates. People are tortured and die over it even today.

I’m happy to presume that it was not a mere painless political stunt to be trotted out at the moment it was needed to prop up a wheezing political party campaign. It wasn’t that for those I name above. Please don’t start a tin-eared “where was X?” campaign that makes it sound like one.”

And so on.  I HATE these tactics!

(3) Kafka Play Breaks Out at Veterans Caucus.

Some dissidents in the Veterans Caucus, including Male Vice Chair candidate Cullen Tiernan, wanted to run candidates to challenge its current keadership.  Leadership rejected the chalkenge, making up a new rule that one had to announce such a run six months in advance of the vote!  Supposedly, this is not in their Bylaws.  So the dissidents wanted a vote on whether they could vote.  That vote too was disallowed.  But dig deep, activists, and volunteer copious amounts of you time so that your leaders can then take credit for your efforts!

Whaddaya MEAN “that won’t work”?  Don’t roll your eyes at me!

(4) Lenore Albert is now taking every opportunity, at various meetings and events, to attack Kimberly Ellis and thus plump for Bauman.

This is, so far as I can tell, largely backfiring.  Like all of the other stunts, it’s a little too obvious.  It also reflects badly on OC — raising as it does the question of “well who put her up to running anyway?”  Regiol Directo Florice Hoffmann remains a primary suspect.

(5)  Berniecrats had a big dinner and event last night headlined by former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner and newly elected Congressmember Ro Khanna.

Yes, this happened — and it was great.  The support for Kimberly Ellis was strong and did not rely on stunt work.  I’ll try to send Vern a photo to post.  There was no spoor of desperation; there were plenty of displays of commitment.  We’ll see how that bears out today.